Teacher's Pet
by Lampito
Summary: A job involving mysterious disappearances has the Winchesters heading to California, to investigate Polly's Perfect Pooches Canine Academy. They're accompanied by Lemmy and Lars the 3/4 Hellhounds - they have big brown puppy eyes, cute little puppy faces, adorable puppy ears, and buckets and buckets of puppy puke. Baby's back seat (and Sam's groin) may never be the same...
1. Prologue

All right, which one of you UTTER UTTER UTTER BASTARDS left this plot bunny in the fume cupboard? Seriously, quod the fuck? I've only just squashed the last one! Then this morning, I had one of the minions complaining that the fume cupboard in the lab was making The Brown Noise (it sounds like something is stuck in the flue), so I went to investigate, lifted up the sash, and a frigging PLOT BUNNY flashed its little white tail at me! Well, I made a grab for it, and it hurriedly whispered a few phrases, but then it jumped up onto the top reagent shelf behind the big bucket of dessicant, where I can't get at it. However, sometimes, writing down what it said to start with can be enough to get it talking - some sort of a plotline would be nice - and since it's worked before, I thought we could try it again, so here goes...

**DISCLAIMER: **They're not mine. If they were, I'd put them to work to earn their keep, and when you found out what employment I'd put them to, you'd all be down here visiting me and I wouldn't have to type anything, I could just tell you. While they fanned you with big feather fans.

**WORKING TITLE:** Teacher's Pet

**RATING:** T. Because if I sew Dean's mouth shut, the Deangirls will get upset.

**SUMMARY OF THE MOMENT (subject to change without notice):** A job involving mysterious disappearances has the Winchesters travelling to California, to investigate Polly's Perfect Pooches Canine Academy. They are accompanied by two of Jimi's pups, Lemmy and Lars the 3/4 Hellhounds - they have big brown puppy eyes, cute little puppy faces, adorable puppy ears, and buckets and buckets of puppy puke. Plus some rather interesting Hellbred talents; Baby's back seat, Dean's Doritos and Sam's testicles may never be the same again...

**BLAME:** I blame the Denizens, who are all shameless breeders and exporters of plot bunnies. Sometimes, I think I have a small insight into what poor Chuck must go through.

* * *

**Prologue**

When the Classic Chevy pulled into the lot and parked in the shadows where one of the lights had blown, Deena looked up from the housekeeping cart she was loading, and smiled.

"Your luck could be changing," she told Pam, who sat tapping at the keyboard, reviewing the week's reservations; their town wasn't that big, but the annual Rainbow Pride parade was becoming a well attended event, and they were almost booked out.

"My luck already changed," Pam said shortly, "The judge didn't buy that asshole's 'Oh I'm So Poor' crap, and the divorce has come through. I've used up all my luck for the week."

"No, seriously," Deena nudged her co-worker as the driver climbed out of the Chevy, "You like 'em tall, don't you?"

"At the moment, I don't like 'em at all if they have a dick," griped Pam, "I'm considering taking the veil, or batting for the other team. I should've headed off to the Pride march tonight, gone to the after party, and found myself a nice girl."

"Now, that's just the sort of defeatist talk we don't tolerate around here," replied Deena sternly. "You gotta get back on the horse. Or, even better, the cowboy. Or at least, let him get back on you..."

"Deena, it's been so long that I can't remember who wears the stockings and who holds the hamster," sighed Pam.

"All the more reason to get back into practice!" insisted Deena. "You need to get laid, Pam. Hey, tall dark and handsome – oh yeah, he's cute - is coming this way. Ask for his number!"

"No," snapped Pam. "Not unless 'he' is actually a drag king named Hans Upskurt who will be too busy performing to do anything except buy me drinks and admire me from afar."

"Well, that hair does look kind of girly," Dina conceded. "Okay, tell you what, you can have TD&H, and I'll have his friend Hot Lips over there..."

After TD&H had come in and politely booked a room with a rather strained but nonetheless cute dimpled smile, Pam turned a look of smug triumph on her workmate.

"Told you that all my luck was used up for the week," she grinned.

"Yeah, yeah," sighed Deena, watching the retreating cute guy head back to his friend. His boyfriend, presumably – once they'd moved out of the shadows of the broken light, the colourful splodges all over their clothes were a disappointing give-away. "Looks like the Rainbow Parade was a real hoot this year. Damn, why is it always the cute ones?" She cocked her head. "Hey, which one do you think pitches, and which one catches?"

"Deena..."

"See Hot Lips over there? I bet he catches. Yeah, he's got bottom written all over him..."

"_Deena!"_

"You know, there's that crack in the wall in Room Four that wasn't patched right – if we move that picture of the cross-eyed kittens out of the way... you wanna get a bottle of wine and make an evening of it?"

"Oh, God, Deen, you are so disgusting."

* * *

So, whaddyareckon? I wonder if this is one of the brothers of Petunia, the plot bunny who dictated 'Nun Of That'.

Reviews are the Strategically Placed Holes In The Partition Walls Of Life!*

*In the Jimiverse, if you DO peek through that hole, you will see Sam using the laptop, and Dean sharpening a knife. Or eating pie. Fully clothed.


	2. Chapter One

OMG, you feed the bunny with reviews - you are so naise! I think it's working. Kind of. I'm wondering if this is Randolph, Petunia's brother. It has the same reticent feel to it so far.

* * *

**Chapter One**

When Jimi Junior had been a pup, they had found out on the road towards his first Hunt that he suffered from carsickness. He'd grown out of it, but not before they'd discovered some interesting facts about the gastric nature of a half-Hellhound. For example, when Jimi puked, it was inevitably a gush of rainbow-streaked... stuff. And there was lots of it. Sam likened him to a TARDIS, because he clearly had more room on the inside to generate puke than you would think from looking at him on the outside. (Dean claimed that, as a toddler, Sam had also shared this unusual capacity.) There was some aspect of his Hellside heritage that played havoc with the space-time continuum inside his stomach. That was the only explanation for the way a single puppy could produce such an amount of the colourful mess.

It was also Sam who came up with the rating system for each event, seeing as Bobby would always ask after the pup, and it was useful shorthand (also less nauseating than describing the exact collateral damage). Both brothers rapidly came to be very good at anticipating bouts of sickness, but they weren't always quick enough to pull over, and get him onto the side of the road, over the nearest trash can, or, on one occasion, with his head over a bridge railing (which gave the pleasure cruiser gently drifting past underneath a redecorating that the crew never forgot). Depending on who and what got puked on, the rating system went from a Level One Event (one Winchester OR one window OR one side of the back seat) in increasing severity through Level Two Event (one Winchester and two windows, OR two Winchesters plus one side of the back seat), Level Three Event (two Winchesters, one window, and the entire back seat), Level Four Event (two Winchesters, two windows, the back seat and the back window ledge) to the catastrophic Level Five Event (both Winchesters, three windows, back and front seats, windscreen, plus at least one of the following: unwary pedestrian/passing motorcyclist/traffic cop).

They had hoped that Lars and Lemmy, Jimi's three-quarter Hellhound offspring, might have been happier travellers, but the road trip from Bobby's to California soon disabused them of that happy notion. In fact, their first car trip to their first Hunt turned out to be very similar to the one their sire had made at much the same age; what would normally have been an easy two day drive for the Winchesters took twice that long.

When the pups were first ushered into the back seat of the Impala, they had barked excitedly at being in the car. Then, they had barked in annoyance at not being allowed onto the front seat with their Alphas. Then they had gone back to barking excitedly at being in a moving vehicle – that had been accompanied by bounding from one side of the seat to the other, while Dean yelled at them and Sam turned around and swatted at them. Then they had wrestled vigorously over Oinker Stoinker, the well-loved much-chewed squeaky blue pig toy that had belonged to their father. Then they had decided to sing along to Led Zeppelin, howling their approval of Dean's choice of music.

Dean was not amused when his snacking in transit was severely affected: Lemmy tentatively pulled his Dumbo trick, flapping his big floppy ears until he was hovering, and tried to get over the front seat to the corn chips. Unfortunately, he'd misjudged the landing, falling out of the air with his front feet in the bag, and his back feet in a place that made Sam let out a small scream at a pitch his voice hadn't managed since before his voice broke.

"Oh, don't be such a drama queen," humphed Dean, "All you gotta deal with is two crushed nuts – I got a whole bag of crushed Doritos ruined right there…"

"It's about time you did something about controlling your damned dog, Dean," squeaked Sam, glaring down at the pup, who grinned good-naturedly back at him.

"Well, look at it this way, bro," suggested Dean, examining the crumbled remains of the corn chips, "At least he didn't damage something important – it's not like you ever use 'em, or anything."

"Screw you, jerk," snarked Sam several tones higher than usual, as he unceremoniously returned Lemmy to the back seat. "He's as subtle as you. Meaning, as subtle as a sledgehammer."

"At least he's not a sneaky little asshat," muttered Dean, who had not forgiven Lars for the most recent episode of bacon theft.

"Sneaky is stealthy," Sam defended the smaller pup, "Which means, not being detected, which definitely means, no attempted improvised orchidectomies."

However, Sam was less enthusiastic about stealth later, when he was tapping at the laptop whilst eating a muesli bar.

"There haven't been any more disappearances recently," he said, waving the snack eloquently in a wide gesture, "But there's definitely been several connected with this place, spread out over a number of years now. The thing is, the only thing connecting them is prior attendance at Polly's Perfect Pooches Canine Academy, and the police are not treating any of them as suspicious, because..." he paused, and looked at his muesli bar.

It was definitely several bites shorter than it should have been.

Sam stared stupidly at the snack, then turned accusing eyes to Dean.

"Dean, what the hell? You don't even like granola!" he snapped.

"Wasn't me, bro," shrugged Dean. "Your ginormous Sasquatch arms are as oversized as the rest of you, but even then, they don't reach over here."

"Then what the..." Sam began, consequently waving the snack again in agitation. As he watched, a chunk of it disappeared.

He narrowed his eyes, and glared. "Knock it off!" he yapped. "I can see what you're doing!"

Lars reappeared, hanging over front seat, chewing on a mouthful of muesli bar. He stared at his Alpha with big, wistful brown eyes, managing to convey the message that he had only eaten it because he was The Hungriest Dog In The World.

"Oh puh-lease," griped Sam, "I was doing the eyes thing long before your sire outran a bucket of cold water thrown over Jimi Senior and Rumsfeld." Realising that the ruse was not working, Lars' expression changed to the one he usually wore whenever he was caught doing something he shouldn't, which was brazen and complete lack of remorse.

"Stealth is better than unsubtle, huh?" grinned Dean.

"Jerk," muttered Sam, giving the snack bar to Lars. "Here, you might as well take it. It's got puppy teeth marks in it, and you've slobbered on it." The pup grabbed the proffered treat, and scrambled back onto the rear seat, where he and Lemmy began to gnaw on it in earnest.

"I don't think you should be feeding them that rabbit food," opined Dean, "We know what effect it has on you, Mr Methane, God knows what it will do to them."

As if in response to his comments, ten minutes later, a familiar smell began to permeate the car.

"Gaaaah!" Dean made gagging noises and flapped a hand in front of him. "Why did they have to inherit that!-? Why? Why?"

"Chips off the old block," smiled Sam, as the lavender scent of Hellhound flatulence swirled around him. "Remember how you tried feeding Jimi Senior burritos to try to counter the lavender? And you fed Jimi Junior all sorts of crap until you found something that would replace it?"

"Yeah," Dean replied fondly, "The J-Man did love him some fried wings. I suppose it gives us somewhere to start with rescenting these little assbutts. Hey, assbutts!" He addressed the pups, who had run out of energy suddenly, the way puppies do, and were curled together on the seat, "We gotta introduce you guys to wings. Your dad loved wings." Another waft of lavender hit him. "Your dad smelled like cinnamon after wings," he finished ruefully.

"They're very young," Sam pointed out, "And cooked bones, let alone fried foods, are not good for any dog, especially pups."

"Come on, Sam," reasoned Dean, "These guys are descendants of the Pit! Mom used to chew up sinful souls for a living, and Dad was a half-Hellhound with a cast iron stomach, capable of contained detonation of unexploded occult ordnance! They'll love wings!" He flapped his hand again. "Let's just hope that wings love them."

Not long after that, Lemmy woke up, yawned, and started to whine and scratch at the seat, which Sam correctly interpreted as a request for a bathroom break.

Twenty minutes later, Lars wanted a bathroom break.

Half an hour later, Lemmy wanted a bathroom break.

Half an hour after that, Lemmy and Lars wanted a bathroom break.

"Hey!" called Dean, as Lars did the jump-through-solid-matter thing as soon as the car stopped. "No breaking the laws of physics!" He got out to help Lemmy, who had followed his brother and, as often occurred, got stuck halfway. "How we're supposed to explain that if somebody sees is beyond me," he told the pup, who grinned happily at him. "You look like a hunting trophy. Come on."

Lemmy eventually made his way through the door, and joined his brother in searching for the right spot to take care of business.

"What the hell is with that?" demanded Dean, when they'd pulled over for what seemed like the tenth time in as many miles. "Hellhounds don't obey the laws of physical matter, and if they do manifest in this plane, they can be the size of small cars! How do animals with that sort of pedigree end up with bladders the size of peanuts?"

"It's a puppy thing," shrugged Sam, "It's quite normal for pups to have to go every 45 to 60 minutes. Jimi was the same. Do you remember when..."

"Ah, shit!" Dean interrupted, then stamped where Lemmy had left a small clump of dead grass smouldering. "You gotta get the whole fire-starting pee thing under control, fella," he reprimanded the puppy, "I've lost too many shirts and pairs of shorts to your irritable bladder."

With a smirk that was decidedly Deanlike, Sam cleared his throat, and indicated another clump of bedraggled weed. "Lars! Torch it! Torch it!" he urged, "Torch it!"

Lars left off growling at a suspicious beetle, and trotted over to examine the offending vegetation. A little hesitantly, he squatted again. The weed began to smoke.

"Good boy!" praised Sam, "Clever boy!" He ruffled Lars' ears, as the pup soaked up his approval. "What a good boy!"

"What an insufferable smartass," mumbled Dean. "And so is your dog."

"Don't hate us because we're intelligent," Sam smiled, patting Lars.

"I don't," replied Dean, "I hate you because you're a shaggy girl who takes too long in the bathroom. And so do you, midget," he added, glaring at Lars. "Come on, let's get going. I'd like to get to Cali before Christmas."

The drive had gone on like that, punctuated by barking, howling, wrestling, tug-of-war with Oinker Stoinker, bathroom breaks and intermittent attempts to invade the front seat.

"I swear, I'm going to nail you two little asshats down," grumbled Dean, glancing into the mirror to see what they were doing.

It was then that he noticed that Lemmy was looking subdued.

Then he started to hiccup.

"Hiccups, Dean!" shouted Sam, "Hiccups! Hiccups!"

"I know, I know!" Dean replied, frantically searching the road ahead for somewhere to pull over.

The Impala swerved off the tar in a spray of gravel, and Dean was out the microsecond it stopped, rushing to open the door.

"Out! Out!" he urged the hiccupping puppy, grabbing him by the scruff. "Out! Right now!"

And in his own way, Lemmy obeyed...

"Oh, that's just..." Sam screwed up his nose at the sight of the rainbow-streak gunk that they had found out with Jimi Junior constituted Hellhound puke. "...Somewhere between disgusting and disturbing," he finished, fishing behind the seat for one of the old towels they'd laid in against just such an emergency.

"They fart like their dad, they pee like their dad, and their pee starts fires like their dad, and now we find out that they puke like their dad," muttered Dean, "I just hope they grow up to Hunt like him. You done, fella?" Lemmy whined, and lifted his head, looking mournful. His brother Lars nosed at his flank, and made soothing whuffing sounds.

"Lars is a good boy," Sam noted, "He wants to make his brother feel better. Aren't you a good boy, huh? Yeah, you're a good boy, you're a good brother, you're a clever dog..."

_huuuuurrrrrrk_

"Oh, God, you're a sympathetic puker," Sam wailed, and reached for another towel.

A few hours and several bathroom breaks and small grass fires later, they experienced another Level Two Event, then in the early evening, there was a more serious episode.

"I'm calling this one as a Level Three Event," sighed Sam, wiping ineffectually at the colourful muck on his clothing, "Maybe tending towards a Three Point Five."

"I'm calling it a day," griped Dean, who had borne the brunt of it when Lemmy tried to get himself through the car door again, and got stuck half way, then threw up as Dean was trying to help him all the way through. "We're finding somewhere to stay and clean up before we go any further."

Which is how, not quite a quarter of the way to their destination, they ended up pulling into the first motel with a vacancy that they spotted.

"How come I gotta go get the room looking like this?" demanded Sam, gesturing down at his colourfully bedaubed clothes.

"Because I look worse," grunted Dean, turning off the engine.

"They'll think I'm some sort of weirdo!" protested Sam.

"Technically, you are some sort of weirdo," Dean pointed out.

"What?" snapped Sam. "No I'm not!"

"You have screwed a werewolf and a demon," Dean reminded him. "Bestiality and necrophilia, bro – very Twilight."

"Ha ha. You're hilarious. What am I supposed to say if they, you know, look at me funny?"

"Tell them that the art therapy class you attend on day release got out of hand when a couple of your classmates went off their medication," suggested Dean.

"Jerk," muttered Sam, stomping off towards the office with a parting shot of _Bitchface_ #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean)

Dean hauled himself out of the car, and made a fruitless attempt to rid himself of some of the colourful goo. Lemmy and Lars were curled together, asleep, apparently exhausted by the day's excitation, transportation, levitation, attempted emasculation, degustation, recreation and regurgitation.

"You guys have got such big shoes to fill," he mused, "And I don't mean with puke."

As he stretched his arms out, Lemmy sat up, yawned hugely and gave Dean a happy puppy smile and a tail wag.

"Don't tell me you're learning emotional manipulation from your asshole brother," smiled Dean, reaching to pick up the pup. Lemmy's tail wagging increased in intensity, and he climbed up Dean's shirt to kiss his Alpha's nose. "Well, okay, tell you what, if you're going to be this cute, I'll hold off filling your pukey little ass full of consecrated iron shot for another day. But you gotta go easy on Sam's nuts - seriously, I think they're shriveled away from lack of use as it is. And when he walks into that office covered in your lunch, they're going to think that he's batting for Team Rainbow." He looked down at himself. "Come to think of it, they're going to think that I'm batting for Team Rainbow. Great. If you've sabotaged the Living Sex God for a hot chick, I will not be happy. Oh, and just a heads up, if you don't behave yourself once we're in the B-A-T-H, all bets are off."

* * *

Reviews are the Adorable Napping Puppies Cuddling You In The Back Seat Of Life!*

With no puppy puke of any sort at all.


	3. Chapter Two

For those Denizens, Visitors, Lurkers and Casual Droppers-In who may be new to the Jimiverse, or who have been battling with Real Life and have been absent for a while, this story picks up immediately after 'Brains, Brawn, Beauty and Rumsfeld' - Jimi's 3/4 Hellhound pups (that he sired when he was really still a pup himself, in the story 'Balls') are about three months old, so they're almost four months old in this one.

* * *

**Chapter Two**

"And make sure you get it all off the window," instructed Dean, honking on Oinker Stoinker to coax the pups into the bathroom.

"I remember the drill," Sam assured him as he changed his own clothes, "I think the blanket took the worst of it." He glanced mournfully at the pile of towels and clothing that looked like it was collateral damage from a gang war fought largely with poster paint. "I guess I better do laundry, too."

"That's fair," Dean nodded judiciously, "I wash these guys, you wash our laundry." He shut the bathroom door, and Sam heard preparations for Operation Decontamination get underway.

It had been a long time since he'd had to clean up the car after one of Jimi Junior's carsickness spells, but they'd been prepared – the old blanket had once more done sterling duty as a seat cover, and cleaning the windows was easy enough, although it added to the pile of cleaning towels that would need washing.

When he was sure that Dean would be grudgingly satisfied with his efforts to purify the car, he headed back towards their room, expecting to hear the strains of the Oinker Stoinker song, and the slightly waterlogged whonking of two puppies being distracted from their bathing by chomping on the beloved toy.

What he had not expected was a yell of "Sonofabitch!"

"Er, Dean?" he called hesitantly.

There was a thump, a splash, and a yodel of surprise from Dean.

"Dean, is everything all right?" Sam tried again.

"Everything's just peachy, Sammy," replied Dean, "Everything is peachy, fine, and okey-dokey, just go do the laundry."

"Er, okaaaay," Sam turned towards the heap. "This place has a laundry, so I won't be gone for too long..."

"Come back here right now, you little bitch!" Dean shouted.

Sam turned. "What now?" he asked sourly.

"Not you!" yapped Dean. "Him! Hey! HEY! Get back here!"

"Dean?" Sam knocked on the door. "Dean, what's going on?"

"Just a minor difference of opinion about the desirability of taking a B-A-T-H, Sam." To the trained observer, Dean's voice held a small element of strained cheerfulness. "It's all under control, just go do GET BACK HERE AAAAAAAAAARGH!"

_SPLASH WHOOONK_

"Dean!" called Sam, "Are you okay?"

"Yes, Sam," Dean told him in a level voice, "I am okay. As okay as a man can be when he's just practically been violated by a blue squeaky pig..."

"Maybe I should give you a hand, bro," Sam suggested.

"No, no, it's all under control," Dean answered brightly.

"Maybe I should help anyway," Sam put his hand on the door handle.

"No! No!" Dean yelped, "Don't open the door! Don't open the HEYYOULITTLEBASTARDGETYOURFL UFFYASSBACKHERE!"

There was a sudden subtle displacement of air at about shin height, and Sam looked down to see a streak of soapsuds suddenly appear on the floor, and a trail of small wet pawprints rapidly make its way across the room.

With a dive and save that would've seen any of his school soccer team coaches move him immediately from striker to goalkeeper, he pounced on the frothy blob. Lars reappeared, wearing the expression that had been passed down to all dogs, from the first grey wolf that had found out thousands of generations ago that hanging around with humans was a pretty good way to live, right up until it was firmly ushered into the nearest river for a wash. It was a mixture of betrayal, disappointment and undiluted woe.

"We've talked about this," Sam chastised the pup, "No messing with the fabric of the universe unless we're training, or on the job." Lars gazed up at him in soapy unhappiness. "Sorry, little guy," his Alpha consoled him, "But it's gotta be done. You don't want people to think you're some sort of little fluffy that goes to a salon weekly to get a new rinse, do you? Come on."

He snuggled the pup under one arm, and opened the bathroom door.

"It's okay, Dean, I got him, he didn't get... what the hell?"

Dean was jumping up and down, trying to grab Lemmy, who was hovering unsteadily just below the ceiling, his ears flapping rapidly as he panted with the effort.

"Get back down here, you little asshole!" demanded Dean, making another jump. Lemmy let out a yelp, and put on a burst of ear speed, wafting just out of Dean's reach.

"Dean, don't yell at him!" snapped Sam, "You'll just frighten him!"

"He'll be lucky if that's all I do," growled Dean, "Come on, Lem, covered in that stuff you look like a mascot from the Greasy Bottoms Formation Hairdressing Team, or something. The hot bitches will make assumptions if you get around looking like that. Worse, some confused dogs will make assumptions..."

Apparently finally getting too tired, Lemmy dropped suddenly to the floor, and hit the ground running.

"Hey!" Dean shot out of the bathroom after him, trailing suds, "Come back here!"

"Don't worry," Sam reminded him, "He can't do the through the door thing yet..."

Lemmy hit the door of their room, and disappeared through it.

"Sonofabitch!"

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Pam was getting on with tabulating check-ins and check-outs for the next day when her cell rang.

"Look outside! Look outside!" shrieked Deena's voice.

"Deena? Look I'm kinda busy right now..."

"Just look outside!" insisted her workmate.

With a put-upon sigh, Pam pushed her chair back, and wandered to the glass door. "Whatever you're doing, all I can say is, I hope it doesn't involve improvising at toga with a sheet, you nearly got sacked last ti - OH MY GOD!"

The guy they'd dubbed Hot Lips less than half an hour ago was running around in the parking lot, in his shorts, dripping wet.

"You can thank me later," Deena said smugly. "Oh, look at that piece of manflesh... What's he doing? Did he have a tiff with Tall Dark & Handsome?"

"I think he's chasing something," Pam relayed, "I think... yeah, he's chasing a puppy."

"There's a puppy?" squawked Deena. "Oh my God, there's a hot wet guy in his shorts, and there's a puppy? Hang on, I gotta get a better view... OH MY GOD! As soon as he catches it, I'm totally going out there with a towel..."

"Deena..."

"Tell you what, if I can follow him back to the room offering towels, maybe I'll get a look inside – if TD&H is wandering about in his shorts, I'll let you know... okay, gotta go!"

"What? Deen, what the hell..."

"Can't talk anymore, Pammy, I gotta film this!"

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

"So, er," Sam began, "The car is clean, and the laundry's done."

"Whatever," mumbled Dean.

Unfortunately, when he had finally stumbled out of the bathroom wearing a towel and an expression of resigned grumpiness, followed by two still-slightly-damp but clean puppies, he had only made it as far as sprawling face down on his bed, so it came out more as "Mrrtrrfr".

"I thought the housekeeper was really nice about it," Sam went on. "She gave me some more towels. And a mop. And she said that if we need anything else, I should just go ask Pam in the office."

"Nrrrrrrg yrrrrrzrrrrrr rrrrrd," said Dean.

Fortunately, Sam was fluent in a number of dialects of Deanish. Muffledeanish was often easier to understand than Drunkdeanish, and considerably easier to interpret than Loopyonpainkillersdeanish. For a start, the grammar and vocabulary was a lot more similar to English. _Knock yourself out_, in this case.

"They seem to be settled down now, though," Sam said, smiling as he eyed the two puppies, as they made themselves a nest of towels, already recovered from the trauma of being required to bathe.

"Rrr grrrdr, hrr wrrdrrvrr frr drr drrrrr rrrrdl frngggz," replied Dean without enthusiasm. _Oh, goody, how wonderful for the dear little things._

"I guess they really are a lot like Jimi," mused Sam. "Remember that trip to Kentucky when Jimi was about six months old? The Level Five Event?"

"Irr nrrrrd lrrrrrkrrrr trrrr frrrrrgrrrr," Dean answered, "Nrrrrd rrrrfgrrr hrr prrrrrkd wrrrrr thr crrp." _I'm not likely to forget. Not after he puked on the cop._

"Maybe it's something I could do some research on, sometime," Sam continued, putting away laundry. "Maybe if we can find out how they manage to produce so much, uh, yeah, well..."

"Drrrrrd brrrrrdrrr, rrrrnlrrrz rrrs trr frrrd r wrrrr trr grrrr thrrrr strrrrmrrrr shrrrr." _Don't bother, unless it's to find a way to glue their stomachs shut._

"Well, Jimi grew out of it," Sam pointed out, "So I think they will too."

"Rrrrr shrrrrrv crrrrrks rrrb thrrr ashrrrz." _And shove corks up their asses._

"Er, may not be a good idea, bro," Sam replied, "They'd probably just fart, and shoot you. With lavender scented corks."

Lemmy sat up, yawned luxuriantly, stretched, and made his way to Dean's bed, where he clambered onto the duffel at the end of it, and, on the third try, made it up onto the mattress where Dean was sprawled. In order to get his Alpha's attention, he used the oldest trick in the book.

"Yeeeep!" Dean's head shot up. "Hey!" he scolded the pup. "Cold nose! Not cool, little dude," he went on, "Butt sniffing is a thing you only do with other dogs, okay?" Lemmy considered that seriously, then kissed his Alpha on the nose.

"It's no good," Sam told him, "Trying to stay angry at one of these guys is like trying to stay angry at a day-old kitten."

"I could stay angry at a day-old kitten if its mom had it in my underwear drawer," Dean offered. "Maybe I could give you to the housekeeper," he mused, scratching Lemmy's ears. "She seemed to think you were cute. In fact, she seemed to think that both of us were cute." He smirked up at Sam. "She did offer to come in and help if we needed the bathroom cleaned up."

"She did?" asked Sam.

"Yeah," Dean nodded, adding a complimentary Sam-infuriating eyebrow waggle. "She said that if the drainage was backed up, she'd be happy to come in and help me flush the plumbing..."

"Gah!" Sam's face screwed up into Bitchface #3™ (I Wish You'd Let Your Upstairs Brain Drive More Often). "I've got a better idea: I'll go get food, while you get dressed and completely fail to have sex with the housekeeper while I'm gone."

"Or," Dean countered, "You could go get food, then I'll have sex with the housekeeper, and you can go have sex with Pam in the office..."

"Dean..."

"I'm sure you'd have so much in common: you could show a polite interest in her spreadsheets, and she'll ask you if you'd like your column widened a few points..."

"Dean..."

"Oh, Sam, she'll say, how about I Grow your font?"

"Dean! Shut! Up!"

"I'm just trying to help," Dean insisted in a hurt tone, "You need to get laid, Sam."

"I need to get fed," Sam grumped back, "We all do. So, I'll get food, you get dressed, and don't let your dog pee on any of my shirts. The last thing we need to do is set off the smoke alarm."

"The battery's always dead in places like this," Dean assured him airily. "I promise I won't let Lemmy pee on any of your emo shirts." His face took in a serious, sincere mien. "I promise. Seriously. I won't. If Lemmy so much as looks like he wants to pee on one of your shirts, I shall stop him, chastise him, and rescue your shirt. I will be your wardrobe Prince Charming, saving even your most unacceptably girly clothes from being set on fire. Even if they arrive and drag me off to take away my Man Card, you can rely on me, Queen Sammy, Your Elongated Emoness, for your faithful knight Sir Sexgod will save your wardrobe from the firestarting pee of the rampaging Hellbeast…"

"Jerk." Sam gave him a final scowl, took the Impala's keys, and left.

When he returned, he discovered that Dean had been as good as his word; not a single item of clothing had been set on fire by Hellpuppy peeing.

However, Lemmy was busying himself chewing the other sleeve of a turtleneck sweater that Sam had picked up in a Goodwill store, and found comfortable – the fact that Dean had declared its pale colour to make it unfit to be worn by anything with a dick was a deciding factor in the purchase.

Later, when Dean sent him out to buy beer, he stopped at a gas station to fill the tank on the way back, and, in a small gesture of brotherly retaliation, bought a lavender air freshener and hid it under the front seat.

* * *

Goooooo Randolph! Reviews are the Chasing Of The Hellhound Puppy Or Winchester Of Your Choice Around After They've Escaped From The Bath Of Life!*

*Towels are compulsory.


	4. Chapter Three

Aaaaargh! The eebil computer gremlins swallowed most of this chapter, and I had to write it again! Aaaaaaargh! It's plot bunnies nibbling on the interwebs, probably.

* * *

**Chapter Three **

"I'm calling this one in as a Level Five Point Seven Event," sighed Sam, surveying the car as the pups made their way out of the back seat.

"They're supposed to be growing out of it!" Dean wailed, surveying the results of a truly spectacular bout of carsickness on his car. "Oh, God, I'll never get the upholstery clean!"

"I thought that police officer was very good about it," Sam went on, watching as the pups took the opportunity to use the wilted grass on the side of the motel's lot, in case he had to stamp on any smouldering spots. "He said when his dog was a pup, she used to throw up as soon as she got into the car. He was very understanding."

"That's because his car had the windows up, and he can just hose it off," moaned Dean, "Oh, Baby, I am so sorry…"

"I'm so glad that old lady who slipped in it didn't hurt herself," Sam sounded relieved. "That could have been awkward. She said she gave her dogs ginger biscuits when they were puppies, and it seemed to help with any tummy upset."

"Somewhere in Indiana, Louis Chevrolet is rolling in his grave," Dean intoned mournfully. "I can feel him judging me – he is looking at me, and asking himself, is that man a fit and proper person to be custodian of one of my works of art?"

"The woman whose roller blades got stuck in it, though, I thought she was going to make a scene," Sam frowned at his brother. "You know, the one who said she was studying to be an animal health technician?"

"She was wearing a bathing suit, Sam," Dean flapped a hand dismissively – the fact that the Living Sex God refrained from making some comment about the way the pneumatically gifted young lady had filled her bikini demonstrated just how agitated he was. "Which indicates that she was planning to go jump in the water somewhere anyway."

"You didn't have to tell her that they'd eaten a piñata full of Skittles," Sam pointed out, "I got a lecture about canine diabetes!"

"And the smell! The smell, Sam! I can smell lavender! It'll never come out! My Baby is doomed!" Dean's voice was full of woe. "She will be forever infused with the stench of that foul herb, the Flower Of Lucifer, the weed of the Pit…" He wiped ineffectually at the rainbow mess on his shirt again, then shook a fist at the sky. "Why? Why? Why do the Fates hate me so much?"

"At least we're here," Sam consoled him, calling the pups back, "So we won't have to worry about this for a while. It only seems to be the long distance hauls that do it." He surveyed the colourful chaos. "I guess we should check in, and clean up."

"I'll check in, and you clean them up," Dean stated grumpily, beginning to stomp off in the direction of the office.

"What?" Sam blinked. "Why do I suddenly get dog washing detail?"

"Because I'm sick of chasing the little bastards around parking lots in my shorts, okay?" snapped Dean. "And I'm sick of hot women telling me that I'm several weeks too late for Mardi Gras!"

"Look, that place we stayed at last night was full up," Sam tried to reason with his brother (always a long shot). "She did us a favour, putting us in the honeymoon suite for a regular room rate…"

"Dat rack, Sammy, dat rack," Dean mourned, "I could've rested my beer on dat rack, and she thought we were a couple. A rainbow couple. See how the Fates mock the Living Sex God…"

"You gotta admit, the pups loved paddling around in the spa," Sam pointed out. "It was more like swimming than bathing, I guess."

"Sam," Dean announced levelly, "When I have access to a room with a super-King bed, a giant spa bath, and free porn channel, 'Bathing two puppies covered in colourful puke' is not on my list of top five things, or people, I want to do in that room. That list includes hot women, breath-holding contests, and possibly the rug in front of the fireplace…"

"Gah!" yelped Sam, giving Dean a shot of Bitchface #6™ (I SO Do NOT Want To Hear The Gory Details Of One Of Your Sexual Conquests, Jerk). "Not interested!"

"Nor, might I add," Dean went on, "Does 'Sharing a bed with my ginormous Sasquatch baby brother and two Hellpuppies and spending the night wondering who is doing the farting' make an appearance even in the list of top twenty things I want to do in that room…"

"Dean, I think you're overreacting…"

"It was like the battle of the bands in there!" Dean's voice took on a slightly manic tone. "The battle of the brass bands! One tuba and two accompanying furry whoopee cushions! And it's all your fault!"

"Look," Sam began in exasperation, "You bitched so much about the smell thing the day before, I thought that the 'gastric health' kibble might help."

"Oh, it helped all right," Dean nodded, 'It helped them hit notes no whoopee cushion was ever intended to hit! Seriously, it was like being trapped in the cab of a semi with a three-note air horn!"

"All right! All right!" Sam held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'll wash the pups! On the proviso that you start taking your medication again immediately."

"Get to it, bitch," snarked Dean, turning back to his car. "Oh, I'm so sorry, girl, let's see what we can do."

"I don't have the technique down like you do," Sam warned him.

"You need the practice," Dean smirked back. "And it's your turn to run around the lot in your shorts."

"Fine," Sam snapped, picking up his duffel and trying not to get any of the mess from his clothes onto it, "I'll wash them while you bond unnaturally with your car. Come on, guys, inside! Inside!"

"Don't listen to him, Baby," Dean crooned to the Impala. "He's a dickless bitch, and he doesn't understand."

Cleaning his car had been a calming activity for Dean since before he began driving her. Like a moving meditation, he found his mood improving as he systematically cleaned the multihued mess from her, inside and out. He checked his watch, grinned, and took out his cell.

"I gotta be ready for when they make a break for it," he grinned to the Impala, "I'm gonna film it, and totally blackmail him with it! What do you think, should we put it on YouTube? Or maybe on a gay dating site…"

He continued to keep an ear out for the startled yell of outrage that would indicate that Lars and/or Lemmy had made a break for it, and were heading outdoors. He was rather disappointed when the moment didn't eventuate by the time he'd finished the car.

"Well, Francis is probably curled up under the sink whimpering by now," Dean told the Impala, "I'd better go and rescue him."

When he made his way back into the room, he did not hear, as he had anticipated, the sounds of ablutionary chaos that might be associated with two Hell-bred puppies running riot while a human cowered in a corner and sobbed gently. What he did hear was Oinker Stoinker honking in accompaniment, but not to the usual doggy bathtime song. Overlaying that was the sound of furious intermittent clicking, as if an irritated click beetle was snapping her prosternum furiously at her husband over his having gone out for a night on the rotting log with his pals and leaving her at home to mind the egg case and the juvenile delinquent larvae.

"We're baaaathing in the rain, _clickaclickaclick whonk honk  
_Just baaaaathing in he rain, _honk whunk clickaclickaclicka  
_We're waaaaashing _clickaclicka_ the puke off _honk honk  
_It's goooooing down the drain…" _clickaclickaclicka whunk whonk_

Worried that something had finally overheated in Sam's brain – he'd always thought that if his baby bro ran the damned thing at redline for long enough, sooner or later it would seize, with catastrophic results – he knocked on the door.

"Er, Sam," he called, "Everything all right in there?"

"Fine," Sam replied, interrupting his singing briefly. "We're laaaaaughing at the mess…" _clickaclicka _

"I only ask," Dean went on, "Because it sounds like you're doing flamenco in there."

"No, no dancing," Sam replied, "Just bathing. We're waaaaashing it away…" _whonk whunk_

Dean made a decision. "I'm coming in, bro," he warned, pushing the door in.

Sam was not rocking gently in the corner, banging his head on the tiles. He was in the shower, in his shorts, singing to the pups as they ran around under the spray. Occasionally, he stomped on Oinker Stoinker to produce the cheerful if slightly waterlogged honking that amused the puppies so much.

"What the hell?" asked Dean.

"Well, you know how much they like to run around in the rain," reasoned Sam, "And you remember how much Jimi enjoyed the shower when he had a stint as a, uh, werehuman, so I thought, maybe they'd be happier in the shower. Just until they're bigger, then perhaps the B-A-T-H won't seem so threatening." As he spoke, Lars let off a fusillade of clicking suggestive of a demented castanet virtuoso.

"Er, Sam," Dean started, "Why is your dog going click at me? He swallow somebody's camera?"

"Oh, I gave him a training clicker," Sam shrugged, "You know what he's like, once he gets hold of one, he's in the zone, and doesn't pay attention to anything else until it's clicked its last."

"What's Lemmy got?" demanded Dean.

"I let him have the sleeve of that sweater you sicced him onto," Sam replied, "He's really enjoying it, and it's keeping all four feet on terra firma. Or, in this case, on shower firma." He reached down, and began to rinse off the pups. "We're geeeeting nice and clean, _whonk honk_ Could you hand me a couple of towels?"

"Okaaaaaay," Dean eyed the scene before him and handed the requested items to Sam, "I'll, uh, I'll just get the rest of our stuff in. Oh, and just for info, if you start to tap dance in here, I will be calling a psych team."

******...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...**

When Sam and two clean puppies emerged from the bathroom, Dean was on his bed, eating corn chips, watching avidly as a rerun of _Dr Sexy_ played on the TV.

"Well, we're done," Sam announced as he dressed, "Two clean puppies. Plus one dead training clicker, but that's a price I'm willing to pay."

"Well done," said Dean, waving a hand at the pile of laundry on the floor. "So, now you can take care of that."

"What?" Sam rounded on his brother. "I've done the laundry for the last three days!"

"You're on a roll," Dean told him, "Who am I to break that now?"

"It's your turn!" snapped Sam.

"Nuh-uh," Dean shook his head, "I need to rest and recover from the trauma of having my Baby so hideously contaminated. I need peace, and quiet. And puppy cuddles," he smiled, as both Lars and Lemmy scrambled to get onto his bed, eyeing his corn chips with expressions indicating that they were The Hungriest Dogs In The World.

"Dean, I want to do some more research before we go enrol at Polly's Perfect Pooches Canine Academy tomorrow," Sam complained. "I'm trying to work out if there was any trait, any characteristic common to the people who disappeared."

"Well, you can do that later," Dean told him dismissively, holding a corn chip just above Lemmy's quivering nose. "Up! Up!" He encouraged, "Up, Lem, Up! Up! Up!" Lemmy danced from one front paw to the other, and jumped for the treat, but showed no indication at all that he was going to try his hovering trick to get to it. "Oh, he's just not getting it," sighed his Alpha, giving the chip to the puppy, then one to Lars. "I guess he's just too young to learn to do it on command yet."

With a serene smile, Sam took a corn chip, and threw his flannel over Lars. "Stealth, Lars!" he hissed in an intense whisper, "Stealth! Stealth! Stealth!" There was an uncertain whining from under the shirt.

"It's no good," Dean grinned, "He's still there, I can see the lump he's…"

Sam pulled his shirt away; Lars had turned himself invisible.

"Good boy!" praised Sam, offering the corn chip, which disappeared in a couple of bites. "Good boy! Clever boy! Good pup!" Lars reappeared again, tail wagging at being praised by his Alpha, and butted against Sam for pats. "Yeah," he smiled at Dean, "I guess some of us are just faster learners."

"Bitch. –Es," muttered Dean.

"Don't hate us because we're smart," Sam simpered at his brother.

"It's a fine line between smart and smartass," Dean said, "And Bobby says that little asshat walks it like a tightrope."

"You could give Ronnie a call," Sam suggested, "She could probably suggest some ideas for getting him to understand what you want him to do."

"I don't need to talk to that insufferable smartass either," Dean sniffed disdainfully. "I can always go watch Cesar or Victoria if I need ideas."

"Right, right," nodded Sam. "I think I missed that episode of _The Dog Whisperer_. 'Today, Cesar has come to help a dog who carries the Blood of the Pit understand the command to flap his big jumbo ears'... "

"Shut up, bitch," instructed Dean. "Go do laundry."

"What are you going to do, then?" demanded Sam sourly.

"When I am more recovered, I will go and get food," Dean announced, "And beer. As part of my therapy."

"Look, it's your turn…"

"Can't talk, watching _Dr Sexy_," interrupted Dean.

"It's not fair to expect me…"

"Talk to the hand, Sam, 'cause the face aint interested."

"Dean, I just washed the dogs…"

"Talk to the ass, Sam, 'cause the rest of me doesn't give a shit."

"Jesus, Dean, you're totally gross sometimes…"

"Talk to the dick, because the rest of me doesn't give a fuck."

"Clearly I am already talking to a dick," snapped Sam, gathering up the various soiled items. "Don't freeze the laptop on porn, jerk."

"Dean settled back to watch TV, the pups snuggled into his sides, until the episode finished. He let out a huff of outraged disappointment when _Dr Sexy_ ended, and was replaced by _Little House On The Prairie._

"Never mind, guys," he grinned, opening Sam's laptop, "Via the magic of the internet, we can continue our _Dr Sexy_-thon until we run out of Doritos."

**...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...**

The laundry room wasn't too far from their room; Sam grinned to himself when he heard the irate yelling that indicated that Dean had just found out that the new wallpaper was a picture of him in his shorts, dripping wet and trailing suds, chasing Lemmy around the parking lot of the motel they'd stayed in the previous night.

* * *

Reviews are the Puppy Snuggles As You Munch On The Corn Chips Of Life!*

*If absolutely necessary, you may have a Winchester Of Your Choice passing you the guacamole.


	5. Chapter Four

**Chapter Four**

"This is worse than school enrolment," complained 'Dean Page' as he filled in the requisite forms. "Next of kin, emergency contact, health insurance, food allergies – what next? Favourite colour? Preferred breakfast cereal? Shoe size? Sexual orientation?"

"It's just for legal ass-covering, Dean," sighed Sam as he filled in his own form with the same purloined surname, "In case you trip over your own feet and inhale a dropped peanut and decide to sue them for millions for mental anguish, or something."

"I may just sue them for brain overload for this damned form," Dean grumped, pausing to look around. "They do seem to be taking this all very seriously," he added, watching a group of Obedience dogs go through their paces.

"That's Class Five," Sam told him, waving at the timetable that had been included in the folder of paperwork, "They're people who do it competitively. Like Ronnie did with Joni."

"Beats me why anybody would want to turn their dog into a fawning yes-man," Dean muttered.

"It's not like that at all," Sam corrected him, "It's a real team effort. It takes a lot of practice and persistence from dog and handler to develop a working partnership to that level…"

"You sound like you've swallowed one the pamphlets for this place," Dean scoffed.

"Well, we're only here for the Perfect Pups Program," Sam reminded him.

"Yeah, yeah, 'Making the most of your pup's potential by learning through play!',' trilled Dean. "I read the brief." He frowned at the clipboard. "What the hell?"

"What?" Sam looked up.

"It's not just my details," Dean explained, "They want the details of my puppy's next of kin. What am I supposed to put? 'By the Alpha of the Infernal Pack, out of a Hound of The Pit'?"

"You don't have to fill in that bit," Sam pointed out. "See? 'Only known details of pedigree', it says. It doesn't matter if your dog is a mutt."

"But he's not a mutt!" protested Dean, leaning down to scratch Lemmy's ears. "This is Lemmy, the best and brightest from Jimi Junior, who was the best and brightest from Jimi Senior – Winchester Ladies' Man - who was, I will remind you, Champion Open Dog at the Minnesota State Championship Show …"

"Well, put that down, then," Sam instructed. "Here – we'll put their sire down as 'Winchester Ace of Spades' – that's the name you gave Jimi Junior for that job in North Dakota."

"What about their mom?" queried Dean.

Sam thought for a moment. "Downsouth Devil Woman," he decided. "Then, we can put down Jimi Junior's sire and dam – Winchester Ladies' Man, and… Sängerhund Frau Rumsfelda," he wrote. "Hmmm, now we gotta put down their pedigree names." He looked up at Dean. "They all gotta start with the same letter," he told his brother.

"Why?" asked Dean.

"I dunno, they just do," shrugged Sam, "Pedigree dogs from the same litter all get given a name where the first name is the name of the kennel or the bloodline, and the next one, they all start with the same letter."

"Winchester Absolutely Awesome," declared Dean, petting Lemmy again.

"No, because Jimi would've had to come from an 'A' litter," Sam pointed out. "It'll have to be a letter other than that. So, if we say a litter every twelve months or so, which would be all a small time breeder would have, the litters would be up to, say, 'I'…"

After some discussion, they decided to list the litterbrothers and one littersister of Jimi Junior's dalliance with a lady Hellhound as Winchester Iron Fist, Winchester Invisible Man, Winchester Internal Security and Winchester Ice Queen.

"So everybody will know you're not just some mutt," humphed Dean to Lemmy in satisfaction.

Sam looked at his watch. "We should go get ready for induction," he indicated the milling group of other people with puppies.

"Yeah," agreed Dean, "Come on, Lemmy, time to go dazzle your peer group with your awesomeness!"

They joined the crowd of gathered puppies and owners. The incoming class consisted of all sorts of breeds, from a Bernese Mountain Dog (who sat placidly watching the other pups) to a Teacup Chihuahua (who barked dementedly and snarled savagely at everybody and everything).

Lemmy and the Bernese were just exchanging friendly butt sniffs while Dean flashed the Killer Smile at the Bernese's owner when a woman with a clipboard made her way to the group, trailed by half a dozen people in instructors' uniforms. She appeared to be in her fifties, wore a tweed skirt and a scarf over her hair, and gave the general impression that if you sliced her in half, she would have something like 'Den Mother' or 'Matron' or 'Akela' or 'Brown Owl' written inside. There was no doubt that at all times she would have, somewhere about her person, a packet of dog treats, a clean handkerchief or a small pack of tissues, some cough drops, barley sugar and a pocket knife with an attachment for clipping dogs' claws and getting stones out of horses' hooves. She was accompanied by the most mixed breed dog either of the Winchesters had ever seen.

"Good morning everybody!" she trilled in a voice that clearly indicated that this was a person who got up with the sun, and was too damned cheerful at an unreasonably early hour every day even before she'd had coffee. "I am Polly Carter, and I'd like to welcome you all to the Perfect Pups Program here at our Perfect Pooches Canine Academy!" A murmuring of greetings went around the group. "I'd also like to introduce Max," she smilingly indicated her canine companion; the dog sat a little straighter at the mention of his name. "You'll see him from time to time as one of the demo dogs."

"Er, what sort of a dog is Max?" asked the woman with the Bernese pup.

"He's what I like to call a Heinz special," Polly answered, smiling dotingly at Max, "He came from a shelter, and made such an impression that I just had to adopt him! He has turned out to be one of the brightest dogs I've ever trained!" She bent to scratch Max's ears. "We find that canine aptitude finds its way out in all sorts of fashions – any dog, with training, can find his or her special talent, and reach potential that owners often never suspected they had! So," she referred to her clipboard. "We'll begin by breaking you up into classes. This is usually a fluid arrangement to start with," she explained, "We can only make educated guesses as to who will be best suited to what class, based on a pup's breeding, so you may find yourself moving a couple of times! It's important that we find the class that is best suited to you and your pup getting the maximum benefit out of the program! It's not about better, or worse – it's about finding the right pace of learning to set your pup on the road to reaching his or her full potential, and have the most fun possible along the way!"

"She's gotta run out of exclamation marks sooner or later," muttered Sam, as Lemmy and Lars were put into a class with two German Shepherds, a Malinois, a Border Collie, the Bernese pup and a mixed breed with quite a lot of Mastiff in her.

"Just so long as she doesn't send us out to sell cookies," Dean answered, smiling at the Bernese's owner again. "And if she wants us to put up tents and sing 'The Happy Wanderer', I reserve the right to run screaming."

The classes were quickly matched up with an instructor, and it became evident that Polly herself would be taking the Winchesters' class. "You've probably already noticed that you're in a class of dogs with strong working instincts," she told them, "I've started you off together because these breeds tend to be the ones who thrive on training! They usually have a strong work drive, and are eager to please their handlers! It mighy seem like 'work' to us humans, but the trick is to make sure it stays a wonderful game for the pups! So! First of all, let's all introduce ourselves, then we'll do some mingling, because socialising is one of the most important things you can do with your pup at this age!"

"Yay for socialising," grinned Dean, proffering a Killer Smile at the Bernese's owner again.

"So, let's form a circle," Polly instructed them, "And I'd like you to introduce yourself, and your faithful friend!"

The class did as they were bade, and the introductions began. A German Shepherd named Karl, Daisy the almost-Mastiff, and Mirra the Bernese Mountain Dog.

"This is Winchester Invisible Man," Sam said, sounding suddenly shy as his pup stared inquisitively around the group, stretching his nose out to exchange sniffs with Mirra, "My brother named him Lars when he was born, because he's small but noisy and bossy. And he, uh, he eats training clickers." That got a laugh.

"You'll find that they'll eat anything they can get their teeth into at this age," Polly consoled him. "And Dean, who is that with you?"

"This is Winchester Iron Fist," Dean declared proudly, "Or Lemmy to his friends. He's the biggest and best and brightest out of the litter…" he glanced down to see Lemmy frantically scooting around trying to catch his own tail; when he did, he growled at the offending appendage, and sank his teeth into it, letting out a surprised yelp as he did so.

"And he eats his own tail," added Sam helpfully. Dean glared at him as the class tittered.

Then there was Mack the Border Collie, Dom the Malinois…

"This is Morgan," said the woman holding the lead of the second German Shepherd, "Although if you're feeling formal, you may address her as Wildhunt Celtic Queen..."

* * *

Zoiks! Where did that come from? What is Randolph planning? Feed the plot bunny, and let's find out!

Reviews are the Adorable Puppies Being Introduced To You In The Puppy Program Of Life!*

*Those of you hoping for a Winchester Of Your Choice in a collar on a lead should go and trawl tumblr for the MA content *frowns at depraved Denizens*


	6. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five**

The Winchesters didn't have a chance to say anything to each other about the likely presence of another Hunter before Polly was herding them all towards an enclosure that was strewn with dog toys.

"This is the puppy pen," she informed them, shutting the gate behind them, "Where the pups can run loose safely. Now, looking around, I see they're a social bunch," she nodded to where Lars was once more exchanging sniffs and nose nibbles with Mirra the Bernese, "And socializing with others is a very important developmental activity for them at this age, so, let 'em go, people!"

The class's human participants bent to let their pups of leads, and the ensuing antics would've been enough to make Cruella de Vil decide to join PETA and become a vegan. They sniffed, licked, rassled and chased each other, yipping adorably.

"I think that watching this might be rotting my teeth," mused Sam, watching as Lars proffered a lurid orange fluffy bone to Daisy, who dwarfed him – she accepted the invitation, and began an enthusiastic tug of war with him, which consisted mostly of him bouncing up and down as she shook the toy around. Lemmy and Mirra rolled together in a happy wrestle-ball, alternatively nibbling each other's tails and sniffing each other's butts.

"That's my boy," smirked Dean, as Lemmy thrust his nose somewhere that made Mirra yip in a startled fashion.

Polly distributed name tags to the humans as the pups played, then called the class to order.

"All right, everybody," she clapped her hands in a businesslike fashion, "You'll find that in this program, we're going to do a lot of playing around with our classmates…"

"I like the sound of that," Dean smiled at the Bernese's owner again as Sam shot him a searing Bitchface #3™ (I Wish You'd Let Your Upstairs Brain Drive More Often).

"…But for now, we're going to start on some work, which is to say, a different kind of game!" she finished brightly. "Because when you're a puppy, anything you do with your human is fun!"

"Yeah, tell that to him when it's B-A-T-H time," humphed Mack's owner, jerking a thumb at the pup, and the rest of the class laughed and muttered in agreement.

"All right, I stand corrected," smiled Polly. "Visits to the B-A-T-H and the V-E-T aside, dogs just love to do things with their humans. So, first of all, we're going to start introducing them to a working collar." She opened a small box in the corner of the pen, and took out a handful of tangles. "They're too young to learn what a correction chain is, but they're all old enough to start on a martingale collar. It's a useful idea to have a distinct collar that we wear when we're working – when the collar goes on, that's the signal to pay attention." She handed them out, and demonstrated sizing adjustment on Max. "So, let your little friends sniff them – but not chew, we NEVER chew on our lead and collar! – that's it, very good, now, slip it over your pup's head, and take the other one off… well done! Now put the lead on the D-ring at the top, and we're ready to learn to walk on the lead!"

All the pups sniffed at their new collars – Lemmy got in a surreptitious little nibble – then stood alertly as leads were snapped into place.

"Wonderful!" encouraged Polly. "Now, with lots of talking and encouragement and praise, get your pup on your left side, and encourage them to walk along beside you. It's okay for them to be a bit hesitant," she went on, as the class began a tentative walk on their leads, "Because it will feel different…"

Lemmy suddenly let out a piercing squeal, and pulled backwards to the end of his lead.

"Lemmy! Hey!" called Dean, startled, "What are you doing, little dude?"

"YAAAAAAIPE!" went Lemmy, fighting on the lead light a game fish on a line. The other pups stopped, and stood or sat, watching the performance.

"That's all right, Dean," Polly reassured him as he struggled to hold onto the lead while his pup tried to pull away, "It will feel a bit strange, so just let him get used to it…"

After a solid thirty seconds of pulling, squealing and generally mortifying Dean, Lemmy showed no sign of getting used to it.

"Okay, then, just let him go," Polly instructed. "Let him run, let him see that it's not going to eat him…"

Dean dropped the lead, and Lemmy tumbled backwards. Without missing a beat, he rolled upright, and broke into a run.

He zoomed around the puppy pen, circling Dean, yelping and wailing like a demented comet orbiting a bemused planet, as Dean tried to get his attention. The other pups watched with a mixture of casual interest and complete 'WTF?'

"Don't worry," Polly told him, "We see this all the time, but you'll be amazed how quickly he'll settle down…"

Six circuits of the puppy pen later, Lemmy showed no sign of slowing. Karl slumped and started to lick his own testicles. Daisy yawned, and lay down for a nap. Lars cuddled against her.

"Come on, Lem," Dean pleaded, "That's enough, it's not going to hurt you!"

"YAAAAAAAAIPE!" went Lemmy, completing another lap. A couple of people sniggered. One of the voices sounded a lot like Sam's.

"Don't just stand there, Francis!" snapped Dean, "Get his brother out here and help stop him!"

Sam called Lars away from Daisy – Dean tried not to notice how readily the smaller pup walked on the lead in his new collar – and prepared to run an intercept tackle.

The problem with such a strategy, of course, is that it assumes that the tackler will have enough mass, and therefore inertia, to stop the tacklee…

Without slowing down Lemmy leaped, and, like a champion showjumper over a double oxer, cleared his brother with several inches to spare.

"Lemmy!" Dean yelled again, falling into pursuit behind the yelping pup.

"Ah, now, if your dog is running away from you, chasing is the last thing you want to do," began Polly in a firm yet understanding voice.

"Lemmy!" Dean continued to chase, "Stop it! Stop it right now!"

"The first thing to try is to turn your back," Polly continued, "And call your dog in a firm, calm voice…"

"Knock it off you little asshat!" snapped Dean, as Lemmy completed one more circuit, and jumped his brother again.

"Hang on, bro!" Sam left the pen, and sprinted for where he'd left his backpack.

"Sam!" Dean called after him, "Sam! Hey, I'm going to put a martingale collar on you next! Lemmy! LEMMY! Stop, you little fucker!"

With a determined scowl, Dean changed direction, and stood, deciding to intercept himself, bending down like a quarterback awaiting a particularly fluffy ball. "I gotcha now, you little bastard," he growled, as Lemmy emerged from behind the group of puppies.

If anything, Lemmy put on an extra burst of speed, and shot through Dean's legs between his feet.

Whether or not he'd pulled the through-solid-matter trick wasn't really important. Maybe he did, or maybe he just aimed for the gap, and went for it.

Whatever happened, one thing was for certain: the lead trailing behind him was most definitely a solid, three dimensional and completely unsupernatural object, moving very fast in accordance with the laws of physics, including the law of conservation of momentum. Momentum is a vector quantity, and the undulations of a running puppy trailing a lead set up a wave motion, propagating the momentum vector along the lead, where it had nowhere to go except towards the tip that was whisking back and forth at an ever increasing speed…

When the end of the lead finally snaked around Dean's leg it flicked against him like the end of a whip, with a definite _snap_.

"Sonofabitch!" shouted Dean, in accordance with the laws of startled Dean, hopping up and down on one leg whilst he grabbed at his calf. "Lemmy, you GET YOUR ASS HERE NOW!"

"YAAAAAAIPE!" went Lemmy, setting out on another lap of the pen.

_Whoooooooonk!_

At the sound of his favourite toy, Lemmy forgot all about hating his new collar, and put on the brakes.

It looked comically like the screeching four-legs-thrust-out-in-front braking manoeuvres performed in cartoons by animated characters (usually accompanied by squeal brakes sound effects). Lemmy didn't have any sound effects as he threw out the anchors, but he had been travelling quite fast, and so he still had quite a bit of momentum.

Sam would later try to console Dean by explaining that the pup had in fact been following a direct command, namely, not to mess with the fabric of the space-time-matter continuum in front of civilians. Lemmy slid like a batter aiming for home with the bases loaded, obeying not one, but two, laws of physics: 1) the vector quantity momentum (P) = mv, and 2) Newton's first law of motion, being that a body will continue to move at its current velocity until it is acted upon by another force.

In this case, the body happened to be Dean's, and the momentum imparted to it could be rendered in SI units as big for his age kilograms times puppy panic metres per second – Lemmy barrelled into Dean's other leg, knocking it out from under him, and Dean accelerated towards planet Earth at a rate of ouch metres per second per second.

"Aaaaargh!" went Dean, not sure whether to grab at his lead-snapped leg or his Earth-bruised hip. (He was not impressed when later on, Sam would explain to him that, technically, he had imparted some momentum to the planet, it's just that the planet was so much more massive than him that it didn't even feel the bump. In fact, he was so unimpressed that he threw a bundled up dirty sock at Sam's head which, in accordance with the laws of ballistics, hit his baby brother with a force of Oh gross, dude! Newton). "I'm gonna feed you Doritos and lock you in the trunk and let you gas yourself, you little bastard!" he howled, as Lemmy, suddenly finding his Alpha down at ground level, wagged his tail and kissed Dean's nose furiously.

_Whonk whunk whoooonk!_

"I got Oinker Stoinker!" Sam returned, triumphantly brandishing the toy. Lemmy, the trauma of wearing a new collar completely forgotten, then obeyed a law of mathematics, viz. the definition of a straight line is the shortest distance between two points – he walked across Dean, getting an "Oof!' when two large feet sank into Dean's stomach, and made a beeline for Sam and the coveted squeaky pig.

"Well done, Sam!" trilled Polly, as Lemmy sat up and put on his best Good Dog Carl expression whilst eyeing Oinker Stoinker hopefully. Sam dropped it, and Lemmy sat down and honked contentedly on it.

"Well, it keeps him distracted if he has to have a, you know, a b-word," explained Sam.

"Distraction with a favourite toy can be a very effective strategy if a pup is getting nervous or overwound about something," Polly nodded, "And it seems to have worked! So, let's all have a try at walking on the lead. Get your pup on your left side, encourage him to walk along level with your leg, okay? So, everybody step off with your left foot," she demonstrated with Max, "And give a clear command in a high, happy voice – 'Heel'!"

Puppies on leads tend to wander, get distracted, pull out in front, lag behind, or just sit down and power nap, but with a bit of encouragement, the class formed a circle, and managed to do what was clearly a try at walking at heel.

Well, except for Lemmy. He and Dean sat out for a while so he could nap, because for some reason, he was very tired.

**...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...**

"Well, that went pretty well, for a first day," commented Sam when they returned to their room later.

"Oh, yeah, just peachy," muttered Dean.

"It certainly seems to have tired them out," Sam went on, as Lemmy and Lars flopped down on their blanket and were suddenly asleep, in the way that puppies can do.

"Yeah, well, you'd be tired too, if you'd run the size equivalent of a half-marathon before lunch," griped Dean.

"It was only their first day, Dean," Sam reminded his brother, "And the whole idea of this program, as Polly will keep telling you with an excess of cruelty to punctuation, is first and foremost to have fun…"

"You certainly seemed to be enjoying yourself," Dean grumped, "Every time Miss Polly praised that little asshat of yours, or that Wildhunt wannabe, you smiled like the kindergarten class smug nerd being told that his hand-outline turkey was better than everybody else's." He broke into a trilling falsetto. "Oh, well done, Lars! Good job, Morgan! That's just brilliant, look at these two, everyone, they know how to sit! Oh, what doggy little Einsteins, they know how to sit! Ooooh, it's the most amazing thing since the invention of hot rollers! I'm so excited I might just wet my lovely tartan skirt!"

"Well, Lars and I have done some training already," Sam reminded him, trying not to sound overly smug, "Even if it's cost a number of training clickers their lives. And Lemmy seemed to have fun, too." Then, unable to resist twisting the knife ever so slightly, he added, "For instance, when we were doing the recalls, and he looked at you and then ran off the other way and started humping Miss Polly's leg, he was a picture of gamboling doggy happiness..."

"I don't mind him having fun, Sam," countered Dean, "But I do object to him having it in a way that leaves me writhing on the ground in pain. Especially if there are hot women present; it's not a good look for the Living Sex God." He glared wistfully at Lemmy. "You'd think with those great big ears, he could at least hear commands properly."

"Dean, when you said 'sit', he didn't mishear you," Sam explained, "He simply answered a call of nature…"

"He didn't have to do it on my boot!" Dean nearly wailed, "And that release word, what's with that?"

"It's to give a dog a clear indication that he's finished working," Sam reiterated. "And the word 'free!' is quite a common one…"

"Well, he misheard that one too!" complained Dean. "My other boot started smouldering!"

"What was that about not wanting to turn your dog into a fawning yes-man?" Sam couldn't resist just a little snideness.

"Shut up," Dean told him, "Lemmy is the best and brightest of their litter," he asserted loyally. He looked thoughtful as a probably explanation for the pup's behavior came to him. "He's probably just bored, because it's all so far beneath him."

"Right," nodded Sam, "The little canine genius is not thriving in mainstream teaching, he needs to go to Advanced Placement to be fully intellectually engaged. It's obvious, really."

"Totally," Dean agreed judiciously. "Anyway, any further leads on our disappearing dog draggers?"

"I've got the names of the instructors," Sam replied, "I want to check out their backgrounds, how long they've been at Polly's Perfect Pooches, and maybe also start some checking on our classmates. Starting with the one with a Wildhunt pup – there's a damned good chance that she's a Hunter. We got no way of knowing, and we don't know what she's here for, but another Hunter could complicate the job…"

"Funny you should mention that," Dean grinned, "Because as it happens, I will be checking out one of our classmates too. Mandy. Mirra's owner? You know, the cute little thing with the lovely smile and the big brown eyes?"

"Would that be the dog, or the owner?" enquired Sam tartly.

"Well, I was talking about the pup," conceded Dean, "But it could equally apply to her human." He consulted his watch. "I'll leave you to your research then, and get on with mine," he decided, picking up his jacket and keys. "You know how they say people start to resemble their dogs?"

"Yeah," said Sam cautiously.

"Well, when I get back, I'll let you know if Mandy has a prehensile tongue like Mirra's…"

"Dean…"

"…And whether she has a fondness for shoving her face into your crotch…"

"Dean!"

"…And I'm especially keen to find out what else she likes to do doggy style besides training…"

"Dean! Shut! Up!"

* * *

As it happens, I will NOT be visiting any tumblr sites looking for... you know... That Sort Of Thing. I learned my lesson with Urbandictonary. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss (or enlightenment is bewildered horrification). Besides, the Denizens are such a depraved bunch, they are perfectly capable of imagining for themselves Winchesters in all sorts of restraints, costumes, and otherwise interesting compromising positions involving safe words, fluffy handcuffs and chocolate sauce. I know this, I read the reviews and the PMs. You WEIRDOS.

Reviews are Cute Puppies* Doing Adorable Things During Training When Introduced To Their New Collar And Lead In The Training Session Of Life!

*The more depraved of the Denizens may substitute a Winchester Of Your Choice for the Puppies, if absolutely must. Just make sure you close the curtains and shut the door and turn on a radio or something to drown out any yelping, you deviated pre-verts.


	7. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six**

Over the next couple of days, the Winchesters kept their eyes open, and asked lots of seemingly casual and unrelated questions. After hours, Sam did research, and Dean did Mandy. However, the willing company of an enthusiastic companion after dark was not enough to lift Dean's mood when Lemmy was shifted to a different class.

Twice.

"This is actually a good thing," Sam argued, "We can cover more ground if we're split up. We can hear more, notice more, ask more if we're in two different classes."

"Oh, yeah, it's a different class all right," muttered Dean, diving into a packet of chips with the ravening despair of a dumped teenage girl seeking self esteem via the ingestion of high calorie comfort food. "It's Dumb Dog class. We spent most of the morning playing 'socialising' games – half of them don't even know what to do with a ball or a tug toy – and sometimes we have two instructors, because most of the pups are so dumb, they need to have someone push their asses down to get them to sit!"

"It's not about being 'smarter' or 'dumber'," Sam tried to tell him, as Polly had done, "It's about finding a level and a learning style that suits a particular dog, and that dog's handler – some dog and handler pairs respond to structured command training, some respond better to more playlike interactions..."

"What are you, their PR copy man?" asked Dean sourly, wiggling one end of Oinker Stoinker as Lemmy enthusiastically tugged on the other. "The instructor thinks I'm dumb."

"That's crap," Sam spat out briskly. "Just because you haven't had much practice at formal dog training does not make you dumb! You just haven't learned yet! You'll be totally brilliant at it! You're the Dominican, bro! You trained full-blood Hellhounds to do their job – that's how awesome a dog trainer you are!"

"You go on using Miss Polly's exclamation marks like that, she'll come after your ass," Dean humphed. "The instructor told us that we needed to practise being the dominant pack member, so we put out dominant vibes, and influence our dog's behaviour accordingly."

"Well, yeah, that's how it works," Sam nodded, "You have to give your dog an Alpha pack member to look to..."

"She made us play dress-ups, to get into a dominant mind-set," Dean went on, sounding unhappy, "I had to wear... a hat. And... stuff."

Sam stared at his brother. "Is that what that was about?" he asked finally, as he recalled seeing Dean's class laughing and hooting over a dress-ups box – they all seemed to be having a great time, except for his big brother. "When I saw your class playing dress-ups, I thought you'd all decided to give the training a rest, and have a go at forming a Village People tribute band, or maybe a Mardi Gras float – I thought you made a great leather dude... joke!" he yelped when Dean glared at him, "It was a joke! Hey, Mandy like it, she wondered out loud what you'd look like in those chaps if you didn't have your jeans on underneath..."

"Well, I didn't find it funny," Dean growled, not even rising to an opening to make a remark that would be bound to provoke a Sam Winchester Patented Bitchface™. The fact that he had no baby brother gross-out comment to make about a very genteel pretend BDSM dress-ups confidence building exercise spoke volumes about how down he was feeling. "That woman with the Westie that's so fat it can barely walk, she kept grabbing my ass, and asking whether I'd like to address her as Mistress Sadistica..."

"Was she the, er, larger lady, the one wearing the, uh, you know," Sam waved his hands vaguely.

"Yeah," Dean shuddered, "I just feel sorry for the hippo that obviously died so they could make that corset..." he shook his head. "I'm going to have nightmares about that," he stated, smiling sadly at Lemmy and petting the pup. "And they all think my dog is dumb."

"No. No. Lemmy is not dumb," Sam told him firmly, unhappy about his brother so depressed. "He's just... distracted. He's so interested in everything around him, he has a bit of trouble paying attention to just you..."

"We screwed up the recall. Again," Dean settled into a blue funk, "It was embarrassing. We're in the dumb dogs class, and everybody got it right instead of us. The Pekinese got it right. The Shih-tzus both got it right. The Bulldog got it right. Scheherazade the Afghan got it right, and she growls at her own tail every time she sees it, because she thinks it's another animal! Hell, even Brutus the Chihuahua got it right second go! It was supposed to be the unfailable exercise! It's supposed to be unscrewuppable, and we managed it!"

Sam fished for something positive to say. The puppy recall was calculated in every way to set up a pup for success: the instructor took the pup several yards away from the rest of the class, then the handler crouched down, waggling a toy if necessary, with all the other pups behind, and called. Invariably, the puppy would make a beeline for the owner, or at least for the other pups and then the owner could catch him or her and pull him in to be praised and rewarded.

Lemmy had first turned around, and wanted to kiss and snuggle with the instructor. Next try, he came halfway towards Dean, then lay down for a nap. After that, he'd set off for Dean, but found an interesting smell to follow, and headed off in another direction. Finally, when it seemed he'd finally got the idea, he headed for Dean, grabbed the toy, then ran back to the instructor to solicit a tug-of-war.

"Maybe he's just more secure and independent than the other dogs," suggested Sam, "He's not anxious about having to be on his own, because he knows that you'll always be there, and he has nothing to worry about."

"You think?" asked Dean doubtfully.

"Totally," Sam asserted, "I mean, he's three-quarters Hellhound, sired by the technical Alpha of the Infernal Pack. Maybe he's even somewhere in the line of succession, technically. A dog with a background like that has gotta be able to operate on his own, work out what to do without his human around. He's gotta be confident enough to go out in the field, and, and, and do his thing. This could be that bit of Lemmy's breeding coming through."

"Yeah," sighed Dean, "So, if we're ever on a Hunt and we're Hunting down satanic butterflies, Lemmy will totally be all over it – all I'll have to do is call him, and he'll go gank 'em." He looked down at the pup that was watching him with dancing, adoring eyes, and scratched his ears. "I don't know why you ran off to chase it," he commented, "There can't be that much meat on a butterfly." He rustled in the bag, and held a chip above Lemmy's nose. "Hey, Lem, Up! Up! C'mon fella, Up!" he encouraged in a chirpy voice. Lemmy yapped happily at the chip, jumping and grabbing at it, but didn't make any move to use his ear-flapping hovering to get to it. "Up! Up! Ah, hell," Dean sighed, and gave him the chip. "I guess he's just not ready to learn it."

"Give him time, Dean," Sam insisted, "He's only a puppy! Being a puppy should be about having fun, and bonding with your human pack, and finding out about the world around you. And Lemmy is definitely doing that," he finished, as Lemmy jumped off Dean's bed and trotted purposefully across the room to growl suspiciously at a drooping potplant that he'd been ignoring for the previous three days.

"Well, between us, I guess we got Advanced Placement and Special Needs covered," Dean smiled ruefully, watching as Lemmy barked intimidatingly at the plant. "So, I can't find any pattern in the presence of the instructors that coincides with the disappearances – they've all been working here for a number of years."

"I did find out something about them," Sam said, "Seven of them were attending as part of an order made against them by local Councils – they were sent here to learn more about being good pet owners, following complaints about their dogs being noisy, or destructive, or overweight, or badly behaved in public, or in need of veterinary attention."

"Yeah? Well, that's something to start with," replied Dean thoughtfully. "People who were not so good at looking after their dogs. Could that be a motivating factor for whatever is HEY!" Dean broke off, and crossed the room to where Lemmy was warming up for take-off, still glaring at the potplant. "Don't you dare pee on that plant and set fire to it, I don't care how satanic it is..."

"No, no, encourage him!" urged Sam, throwing the packet of chips at Dean. "Encourage him, then reward him!"

Giving Sam a dubious look, Dean did so, waving a chip. "Up, Lem! Up! Up! Up! Come on fella, Up!"

Eyeing the chip, Lemmy forgot all about the plant, whuffed happily, and rose unsteadily into the air.

"Good boy! Good boy!" Dean squealed like a cheerleader spotting a TOTALLY cute pair of Jimmy Choos in, like, the most PERFECT colour EVER. "Up! Up! Good boy!" Lemmy grabbed the chip, then dropped back to the floor, crunching contentedly.

"So, we could be looking for somebody who's a really fanatical dog lover, and thought that sub-standard dog owners needed to be punished," mused Sam, as Dean rassled with Lemmy, both of them radiating happiness. "Seems a bit over the top, though."

"So, these people disappeared, but what happened to them?" Dean wondered out loud. "Did they end up dead?"

"Unknown," Sam shrugged, "Possibly they ended up dead, but there's no confirmation. They just... vanished."

"We need to talk to whoever saw them last," Dean decided, "Can you get us a list of names and last known addresses?"

"Sure thing," Sam confirmed, watching as Lars snuffled across the carpet to help his brother snurfle up chip crumbs. "I think this is their way of telling us that they're hungry."

"I can relate to that," Dean humphed, "It's time to eat. What do you say to dinner time, little dudes?" The pups yapped happily at him. "Well, I'll go get food for the humans, and Second of the Pack here can feed you guys." He bent to pat them both. "If you're good, there may be wings in it for you." He straightened up. "Mandy really said that?" he asked, with an expression that was less like Totally Disheartened Dog Trainer and more like Living Sex God.

"Yeah, she did," Sam admitted reluctantly, not adding that another woman had also wondered the same thing, and speculated on what else a man dressed like that might be prepared to do with a collar and lead.

"Awesome!" Dean smiled happily, the ever-optimistic ladies' man avatar of the Living Sex God once again asserting itself. "Maybe I can ask her about it tonight."

"I don't want to know," Sam told him snippily, "Just try not to be too noisy when you come back in."

After they'd eaten, Dean headed out for another assignation with Mandy; Sam noticed that he left earlier, and returned later, but didn't think much of it at the time.

It wasn't until they got back to the Canine Academy the next day, to be told in passing by one of the staff that something a bit odd had happened – there appeared to have been a very tidy break-in, in which the only thing that was tampered with was the dress-ups box, but whilst the contents had been rearranged, nothing was missing – that Sam shot his brother a blast of Bitchface #2™ (Dean Is A Simple Animal Governed By The Three Fs: Feeding, Fighting, and… The Other One).

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

After the first week, the handlers had a personal training review with Polly. Dean and Lemmy were in the middle of one more try at mastering the command Drop – the pup would start in a sit, and lower his front legs to the ground, but as the front end went down, the back end came up, leaving him in a good-naturedly confused sort of bow – when he was called into the office.

"So, Mr Page," Miss Polly smiled brightly at him, and gazed fondly at Lemmy, who exchanging friendly sniffings with Max the demo dog, "Why don't you tell me how you think you've been doing?"

"Well," Dean began, "Lemmy's been having a great time – he loves it here, he can't wait to get out of the car of a morning. He loves the company of the other pups, he loves to meet new people, he loves the games, and he goes home and sleeps like a log at the end of the day..."

"But...?" she prompted.

"Yeah, but," sighed Dean, "We don't seem to be making much progress with, well, actually learning stuff."

Polly fixed him with a firm gaze. "Mr Page," she said firmly, "I believe that I may be responsible for that."

"Huh?" Dean looked at her dumbfounded. "How do you figure that? It's our fault, if we can't learn things..."

"Nonsense, Mr Page!" she insisted, "The fault in this is mine! I should've spotted this right away! Look at your dog, Mr Page." She indicated Lemmy, who was stalking the tip of Max's tail, which the older dog bore with equanimity. "Somehow, I managed to overlook the direction in which his talents obviously lie!"

"Er, you did?" queried Dean.

"Oh yes," she confirmed, "Just look! His confirmation is magnificent, even at this age! His temperament and character are flawless! He enjoys being the centre of attention, and he is unafraid of new dogs, new people, and new situations. His action is marvellously economical yet fluid. We have been taking completely the wrong approach to this dog, Mr Page!" she declared, standing up. "Come with me – we are putting you into another class, and this time, he will thrive!"

"I didn't think there was an Obedience class any further down than the one we're in," Dean noted glumly as they headed back out into the Canine Academy.

"We're not going to get your pup doing Obedience, Mr Page," she informed him smilingly as she led the way to a group of dogs doing something distinctly different: they were all on much longer leads, and were trotting around the ring pulling out in front of their handlers. "We are going to play to his strengths!"

"Er, and what strengths would they be, exactly?" enquired Dean, "Because if there's a class somewhere that teaches dogs to chew up socks and pee on potplants, he'll ace it..."

"Not at all," Polly told him with a bright smile, "Dogs are as individual and varied as people, Mr Page – they are all as different in talents and temperaments as we are! Some of us are born to be rocket scientists, some of us are born to be couch potatoes. And a few, a very rare few, are born to be supermodels!" She gestured to the instructor, who hurried over. "Mrs Blackman," she told the instructor excitedly, "I have brought you a Working Group champion!"

* * *

Le sigh. The recall. The bane of my Sunday mornings - you can almost hear the dog thinking out loud "Oooooh look something shiny!" as she bolts off in the opposite direction...

You can read all about Dean training Hellhounds in 'In Dog We Trust', in which we learn how Hellhounds come to be Hellhounds in the Jimiverse.

Meanwhile, feed the plot bunny! Goooooo Randolph! reviews are the Adorable Puppies Willing To Learn Commands For Treats In The Obedience Class Of Life!*#

*I should stop using up Miss Polly's exclamation marks so they don't run out before the end of the story.

#For those depraved Denizens who would rather have a Winchester Of Their Choice, I have no desire to know what sort of tricks you want to teach 'em_… *pulls Lampito Cat's Arse Face Of Disapproval #1*_


	8. Chapter Seven

**Chapter Seven**

Sam hesitated when he arrived at Polly's office for his personal review; Morgan the Wildhunt pup and her handler were already there.

"Oh, hey, Kelly," he began, "I must've got my time wrong…"

"No, no, Mr Page," enthused Polly, "You are entirely correct! I wanted to speak to both you and Miss Whitestripe at once! Because what I have to say to you is practically the same thing!"

"Uh, okay," Morgan's handler Kelly and Sam both gave her hesitant smiles.

Polly beamed back at them. "Here at the Canine Academy, we have seen many dogs and their handlers go on to develop an interest in Obedience," she began. "And I believe that it is good for mind and body of both dog and human. We have seen many dogs attain titles – why, Max here is only a couple of passes short of his OC, Obedience Champion. Have you ever seen a dog working at UDX level, Mr Page, Miss Whitestripe?"

"Uh, a, er, friend of ours had a dog that got her OC title," Sam offered, as Kelly shook her head. "She was… a very special dog."

Polly smiled even more widely. "What would you say if I told you that these two furry little friends were destined for such greatness?"

Both Hunters looked at her bemusedly.

"In the Perfect Pups Program, the emphasis is on socialization and play, and establishing a good basis for continued development into a good canine citizen," Polly told them, "But having seen your pups in action, I must confess myself flabbergasted!"

"Er, flabbergasted?" echoed Kelly, Morgan's owner.

"Flabbergasted!" repeated Polly. "Amazed! Astonished!" she beamed at the pups; Lars stuck his nose in Morgan's ear, and she batted at him with a front paw. "I have never seen such young animals take to training so readily! They soak it up like little doggy sponges! They have responded magnificently! They have attention spans unheard of in such young animals!"

"Oh," said Kelly, "That's…nice."

"Clearly, it's very important that we don't let them get bored," Polly went on enthusiastically, "We must walk the delicate line of keeping them engaged, letting them socialize and play, and maximizing their learning potential!"

"We must?" said Sam.

"Oh, most definitely!" Polly gave the distinct impression of being like a ballet teacher who, in the middle of a kindergarten square dancing class, suddenly realizes that she has found the next Nureyev and Fonteyn right under her nose. "It is no exaggeration to describe them as a pair of puppy prodigies! We must make every effort to help them, urge them, support them to become the best working dogs they can be! We must be the wind beneath their wings so that they may soar to the headiest heights of canine education!"

"Er, yeah, well, yeah," nodded Kelly, exchanging a quick look with Sam that said 'We should probably just humour her until we have a chance to back away slowly'.

"To this end, I shall be taking over your instruction for the rest of the Perfect Pups Program myself," Polly announced. "It will be a pleasure, and a privilege, to help two such talented young animals on their way to becoming wonderful working canine companions!"

"Oh, er, well, that's great!" replied Sam, "You hear that, Lars? We're going to be Advanced Placement!"

Lars was sniffing noses with Max, and staring hard at the older dog. _If that mutt suddenly addresses him as Grasshopper_, Sam thought, _I am out of here…_

"Well, I'll see you back again next week," Polly told them, "Don't forget to practise over the weekend!"

"We won't," Kelly assured her.

"Well, uh, thank you, Miss Polly," Sam stood up, and checked his watch, "I just gotta go find Dean – I didn't see him with his class before…"

"Oh, I moved your brother and his pup to another class!" Polly beamed again.

"What?" Kelly burst out. "I didn't think there was one under…" she suddenly realized what she was saying, and sheepishly gulped into silence.

"I think you'll find your brother and young Lemmy will be having somewhat more success," Polly assured Sam. "Why don't we go and see how he's doing? This way!" She headed out purposefully, Max trotting at her side.

"She's kind of… intense," remarked Kelly _sotto voce_ as they both followed her.

"Er, just a bit," agreed Sam, equally quietly. "I'm starting to wonder if I've landed in a sort of canine _Toddlers & Tiaras_ program."

"If somebody tries to put your pup in high heels, I suggest running away very fast," Kelly said frankly, which made Sam stifle a snort of amusement. "So," she added casually, giving him a smug grin, "What are you thinking for this job? Vengeful spirit doesn't fit – got any ideas yet?"

**...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...**

The class Polly led them to was doing something very different: a magnificently coiffed Poodle on a very long lead was being encouraged to chase around after the instructor, who jogged backwards squeaking on a squeaky toy. The dog came to a hesitant stop in front of another instructor, and the handler carefully placed its legs to stand it square.

"Okay, I stand corrected," intoned Kelly. "There is in fact a class for dogs so dumb that they don't know where to put their own feet…"

"Oh, this is a showing class, Miss Whitestripe!" enthused Polly. "The dog is learning the stack, the show stance… Oh, look whose turn it is!"

Sam did a double-take when he saw the instructor gesture to Dean and Lemmy. "Oh, God," he sighed to himself, "They'll probably just trip over a lead that long…"

As they watched, Lemmy pulled out to the end of the lead and settled into a strong gait for a lap of the class ring, his head up, ears pricked and face a picture of happy alertness. Dean loped behind him, calling out an occasional encouragement, but the pup largely worked by himself. Both of them were positively strutting, exuding cocky confidence and generally giving the distinct impression that they might break out singing 'I'm Sexy And I Know It' at any moment.

"I don't believe it," Sam said bemused, "I don't believe what I'm seeing."

"It was just a case of playing to his talent, Sam!" Polly practically trilled, "He's a confident, outgoing individual, and he was born to do this! He invites the attention of the audience! He revels in being the centre of that attention!"

"And what about the puppy?" asked Sam with a snort.

"He has it, Sam," Polly didn't seem to hear him, "Little Lemmy there has that intangible something, that ring presence, that It factor! He is a conformation champion in the making!" As they watched, Lemmy came to a stop in front of the instructor playing the judge – with one little wobble from a hind leg, he came to a halt in a perfect show stack, looking poised and alert, tail waving slightly. There was a brief chorus of 'Awwwwww', and a small ripple of applause from the rest of the class.

"Miss Blackman tells me they have taken to it like ducks to water," Polly informed them happily, "What a marvelous blood line you have there! Such talents from the one litter!"

"A rocket scientist and a supermodel!" interjected Kelly, in a guileless voice that had Sam stifling a laugh.

"I think that Lemmy takes after their dad," Sam smiled as Lemmy stood for examination, hardly moving at all, "Jimi was a big handsome boy who loved people, and loved to be in the centre of whatever was going on."

"This one must take after their dam, then," Polly smiled and bent to pat Lars, who accepted the attention happily, "She must be a remarkable animal. I would be very interested to see her in action."

"Let's hope you never do," Sam muttered to himself, as Dean and Lemmy strutted back to their place in the class to a smattering of applause. "Well, he's certainly impressing him classmates," he observed.

"Not all of them," Kelly corrected, nudging him and nodding towards the Poodle's handler, who was wearing a face that was more grimace than grin. "Somebody is distinctly not impressed. Or, if I had to take a guess, I'd say somebody doesn't enjoy being shown up, and elbowed out of the limelight."

The show class broke up shortly afterwards, and, after being exhorted by Miss Polly to do some practice over the weekend, prepared to leave.

Dean was positively bouncing with restored self-confidence. "Like we need to practise," he snorted, bending down to ruffle his adoring pup's ears, "Either you got it, or you don't, and we got it, right, Lem?"

"Yeah, right, Dean," Sam rolled his eyes, marveling at the way his brother had rebounded from existential crisis and self-doubt.

"It's true!" Dean insisted, "Miss Polly, and Mrs Blackman, say he's a natural for the ring! He's got the style, he's got the 'tude, he is the shit!"

"How coincidental," Sam mused, "He is it, you're full of it."

"Don't you listen to him," Dean told Lemmy, "He's just jealous because your scrawny runt of a brother is always going to be the 99-pound weakling 'before' photo to your magnificent 'after' pic…"

"Well, while you pretty boys strut on the catwalk like underwear models between bouts of steroid rage and throwing up, Lars has been assessed as being highly intelligent, with great aptitude for training," Sam sniffed. "In fact, she's going to see to his training herself for the rest of the Program, because he's so unusually talented."

"Hear that, Lem?" said Dean brightly. "We're going to have a champion fawning yes-man in the family!"

"He's bright, he's quick on the uptake, and he will be able to learn things that will be a hell of a lot more useful than standing around like a brainless bimbo," Sam said. "Anybody can stand around posing. Hell, stores use mannequins to stand around posing."

"Yeah, but we do it more awesomely than anybody else!" insisted Dean. "Behold the Living Sex God, and his companion the canine Living Sex Godlet!"

"Well, if that's what floats your boat," Sam retorted, "Being paraded as a sex object – people don't care about you as an individual, it's just about ogling you as an object; they just want to have sex with you. Or want your dog to have sex with their dog."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Dean batted his eyelashes at Sam.

"You two really are brothers, aren't you?" interrupted Kelly. "I thought that might just be part of your cover, but it's clear that you are actually siblings. That, or you're married."

"Gah!" yelped both Winchesters at once.

"That is so totally wrong!" Dean practically wailed, "Why do people assume we're together, as in, _together_ together?"

"What sort of a name is 'Whitestripe', anyway?" demanded Sam, miffed about having been 1) identified as a Hunter, 2) irritated by a big brother whose cheerfully annoying demeanour had reasserted itself, and 3) interpreted as being Mrs Dean.

"I like their music," Kelly shrugged. "Which I think you can relate to, Mr 'Page'… so, like I said, I don't think vengeful spirit, possibly a coven established in the area, but no remains from any of the disappearances found… you are here to work this job, aren't you?"

"Sam!" Dean hissed at his little brother.

"She worked it out," grumbled Sam, glaring right back. "I didn't say anything! And he picks the names," he added in a sullen mumble. "I keep telling him they're stupid choices, but he never listens."

"He didn't have to say a thing," Kelly smiled with infuriating serenity, "The protection charms on their collars were something of a giveaway. Oh, and the way you both jumped when you heard the word 'Wildhunt'." She grinned as the Winchesters glared at each other again, just on general principles. "When I saw the size of Lemmy, I did wonder if he was a Jaegerhund pup, until you used his kennel name – you can imagine my surprise when I called Bobby, and he fessed up that they were from one of his dogs…"

"You know Bobby?" gawped Dean.

"_Everybody_ knows Bobby," sighed Sam glumly. "I swear, one day, humankind will discover space travel, and we will travel to planets on the other side of the galaxy, and we'll make contact with another intelligent species, and it will be declared the most historically significant event ever for either world, and two entire planets will celebrate and rejoice to discover that in this great big cold uncaring universe we are not alone, and as the human explorers seek to establish some common lexicon with our new friends, once a medium for communication has been identified, two vastly different species will reach out to each other, to embrace their common mortal sentience together, and on this momentous, historical occasion, with every eye on each world watching this first exchange between these two species that are utterly alien and yet united by a desire to understand each other, one of those cross-galactic beings will twitch its antenna, and the first thing ever said to a human being by a fellow mortal creature from another world will be, 'Oh, hey, can you get a message back to Bobby Singer for us? We think we're dealing with an Interstellar Blue-Assed Atomic Wedgie Monster, and we'd like to get him to look over our sigils before we try to spring the trap'…"

"Interesting," Kelly mused, "Bobby said that Dean was the drama queen, not you."

"What?" yapped Dean. "Francis here _is_ the drama queen! The big girly-haired vegesaurus dolphin-friendly tofu-swilling maternity-shirt-wearing hug-it-outing emo bitchfacing drama queen! I am totally _not _the drama queen!"

"Oh, yes of course," Kelly slapped her own head, "I forgot. You are the Living Sex God. People take one look at you and want you to have sex with their dog."

"You better believe it, sweetheart… _what?_" Dean's expression went from nine-tenth Killer Smile to seven-eights WTF as his ears caught up with his libido.

"Oh, God," Sam scrubbed a hand over his face, "Look, if we're all here after the same whatever-it-is, we might as well as pool our resources…"

"I don't do collaboration," stated Dean firmly. "Sam, we don't know the first thing about her," he complained, "We don't need a tagalong to get in the way – I have enough to do keeping an eye on you without having to look out for another person."

"Gee," Kelly noted wryly, "What if I promise to do my very best not to get eaten by an Interstellar Blue-Assed Atomic Wedgie Monster on your watch?"

"If we try to work this job separately, we'll just end up getting in each other's way," Sam pointed out. "We can cover more ground with three of us, anyway."

Dean pulled a face that came dangerously close to a pout. "She can help with the intel," he decided grudgingly, "Until we work out what we're dealing with here."

"I feel privileged," Kelly sighed, "A bit like those cross-galactic beings, really."

"Why don't we go eat, and see what we've got?" suggested Sam diplomatically, like a European ambassador trying to remind the British High Commissioner and the French Commissaire de Bureau d'Etrangés that these days they are supposed to be on the same side. "Until we figure out what's going on, we can't do anything, anyway."

"Okay," Dean agreed in a tone indicating that even he was amazed by his own magnanimity, "We'll meet up for food, and then discuss strategy. Right after I call Bobby and tell him that I am totally not the drama queen here."

"Well, you can get a bit melodramatic," Sam opined.

"Shut up, Francis," Dean shot back, "I am not melodramatic. Sometimes, I'm emphatic in an intense and masculine way, but I am never melodramatic."

"Okay, okay," Sam placated, "Not a drama queen." He paused. "A drama queen-in-training, perhaps. A drama princess."

"Sam…"

"Drama duchess, maybe."

"Sam…"

"Drama dame? Yeah, Dean the drama dame."

"Sam…"

"You'd get a tiara."

"Knock it off, bitch."

"Are you sure you two aren't actually married?"

"Shut up."

* * *

_WHOOOONK WHOOOOONK  
_  
FANFIC TROPE ALERT! FANFIC TROPE ALERT!

Fanfic Trope #197 (Winchesters Encounter Competent And Rather Sassy Female Hunter On A Job And End Up Collaborating) spotted off the port bow! What is Randolph the plot bunny plotting? Speak, bunny, speak!

So, they gotta go talk to people now and chase up info about the people who've disappeared - any preferences for the guises they may have to don? Pool boy? Singing telegram? Teddy bear doctor? If anybody comes up with a suitably silly suggestion, it might get a nibble from Randolph...

Reviews are the Overreacting Winchester Of Your Choice Joining You For Comfort Food On The Sofa Of Life (Plus A Part Hellhound Puppy To Snurfle Up The Crumbs)!


	9. Chapter Eight

**Chapter Eight**

"So, don't wait up, Sammy," Dean grinned as he picked up his jacket, "Mandy wants to wear the cowboy hat tonight, so..."

"I SO do NOT want to know," snapped Sam, starting up his laptop. "Just go."

Dean sighed. "You know, Mandy and I could stay here tonight, and keep an eye on the puppies," he suggested encouragingly, indicating Lemmy and Lars, who were curling themselves together on their blanket to sleep. "Then you could go out to a bar, have a few drinks to relax, maybe find yourself a nice girl who would take you home and be gentle with you..."

"Jerk," muttered Sam, looking at his watch.

"You know, put on some quiet music to keep you calm," Dean went on, "Leave the lights off, maybe even promise to keep her eyes shut the whole time..."

"Will you just shut up and go?" snarked Sam, "I've got research to do if we're going to pull together a list of people to talk to."

"Oh, sounds exciting!" leered Dean, "An evening spent trawling through phone directories and social media, you animal, you! I can see you getting all worked up about the very thought of searching through the local paper's archives. Maybe finding some girl to put her Facebook in your laptop..."

"Dean! Go! Away!" snapped Sam in exasperation with a shot of Bitchface #3™ (I Wish You'd Let Your Upstairs Brain Drive More Often). "Before I decide I want to put your Facebook through the nearest Window and go completely Mozilla on your ass!"

"That alpha male taking charge thing is something that women can find kind of hot, you know," Dean waggled his eyebrows in such a lewd fashion that Sam wondered idly if it was possible for facial hair to combust spontaneously.

"I hate you so much," Sam fumed in a resigned tone.

"You'll thank me one day, little brother," Dean patted Sam on the shoulder as he passed, looking up at the sound of wheels on gravel pulling up in front of their room. He went to draw his gun, but Sam forestalled him.

"It'll just be Kelly," he explained.

"Kelly?" repeated Dean,

"Yeah, Kelly," Sam rolled his eyes. "Is there an echo in here? I asked her over, toOOF!"

Before he could finish his sentence, Dean grabbed him in a manly, back pounding hug.

"Yes! Yes!" he hissed in triumph. "Sam, I just want to say I'm proud of you!"

"What?" Sam pushed his brother away. "Dean, she's going to help me..."

"Oh, I don't doubt it, I don't doubt it for a second!" Dean's smile practically split his head.

"No! It's not like that!" Sam yelped. "She's done some preliminary research, and..."

"That's good, that's really good," Dean nodded encouragingly, "So she already knows what you like, huh? That shows she's keen..."

"Dean!" Sam snapped desperately, as a knock sounded on the door. "She's here to do research! Nothing else!"

"Of course, Sam, of course," Dean smiled soothingly and checked the peep hole. "Kelly!" he enthused, opening the door, "Great to see you again!"

"Eh, yeah," she eyed Dean warily, "It's been a whole two hours since we ate."

"So, I'm going OUT," Dean told her, "I'll be out for QUITE SOME TIME. In fact I probably WON'T BE BACK until tomorrow MORNING. So I'll be OUT OF YOUR WAY."

"Oh, uh, that's good," she smiled and backed away a couple of steps. Behind her, Sam performed a mime sequence that seemed to imply something about forcibly removing someone's head from their shoulders with an unspecified instrument, possibly a kitchen spatula, or maybe a cheese grater.

"You kids have fun!" trilled Dean, giving them a thumbs up as he strolled out to the Impala.

"Is your brother okay?" Kelly asked a little anxiously, as they watched Morgan wrestle briefly with Lars and Lemmy, before all three pups flopped down together on the blanket to snooze.

"He's fine," Sam told her through a forced smile, "He just suffers from congenital annoyingness. So, like we talked about, it could be something to do with these people not being very good at looking after their dogs, so if we start with them..."

They worked for a couple of hours, trying to figure out appropriate ways to approach people who had known the individuals who'd disappeared. Then Morgan stood up, yawned, went to the door, and yipped.

"Hang on, she wants a bathroom break," smiled Kelly, moving to let her pup out.

"She is bright," Sam remarked when they returned.

"It's a trait of the Wildhunt bloodline," Kelly told him, "Quick on the uptake; they're easy to housetrain at a very young age." She gave him a thoughtful look. "I wondered if you'd had a Wildhunt pup before, since you recognised the name."

"No," Sam replied, "But I did meet one, once. When I was a kid. She saved Dean from a demon."

He related the story of how the elderly dog named Kali had helped defeat a demon when they were both just boys, and Kelly started muttering to herself.

"Indian Summer, Indian Summer," she mused, tapping at her laptop, "That sounds familiar... aha!" She brought up a document that turned out to be a pedigree. "Thought so. There, look, six generations back. Wildhunt Indian Summer. Your retired Kali is one of Morgan's ancestors, on her dam's side."

"Well, who'da thunk it?" Sam smiled at the small pup. "If she grows up to be like Kali, she'll be formidable. Do you think they're really descended from a Hellhound?"

"It's a good story, isn't it?" Kelly grinned. "Too good not to repeat, really." "She reached down and ruffled Morgan's ears. "Extremely unlikely. I've seen pictures of Arcadia, the founding bitch. She was big, and she was clearly not a pedigree Shepherd – probably part wolf, part who knows what. She probably ran off and got herself in whelp to something big and nasty and feral. Anyway, it's not as though you can exactly get on the phone to Hell and ask for a copy of the pedigree. Hello, Hell? Yeah, excuse me, I think one of your dogs got my dog knocked up, could you fix the hole in the fence, then come on over and see if the puppies look like any of your dogs?"

"I guess not," Sam smiled.

"A seriously mixed heritage would explain some aspects of the bloodline," Kelly went on, "I studied genetics for a while – before I started Hunting – and trying to work out the line traits for Wildhunt is a bit of a hobby. Sometimes, these dogs are perfect models of Mendelian inheritance, but sometimes, completely inexplicable using the theories of inheritance as they apply to, well, other mammals."

"Yeah?" Sam found himself interested. "Like what?"

"Well, they get the occasional throwback," Kelly elaborated. "Which can happen in any species, but not like this. Aspects of temperament and anatomy that I can't account for through either dog, or even wolf, heritage. I suppose it could be some somatic mutation cluster that just cropped up and surfaces occasionally, which is always a possibility in a selectively bred pedigree. For instance, Morgan's sire was supposed to have been something of a monster, built like a tank – they were going to put him to sleep because he was savage, uncontrollable, until at the last minute he chose a Hunter who could handle him."

"Wow," Sam made a mental note of that, and reminded himself to talk to Bobby and Dean about possible undesirable genetic weirdness in Hellhound descendant pedigrees. "Why did they breed from him, then?"

"He turned out to be so damned good, they wanted to keep the bloodline, but try to dilute it with a completely different pedigree," Kelly explained. "They thought it was worth the risk. And it worked."

"Hell of a risk to take," Sam snorted, looking back at the screen, "If you think you might have a dog that's reverting to something really nasty... huh?" he stared at the document. "Wildhunt Shark Attack? That's impossible!" he blurted. "Mako's been dead for nearly twenty years!"

Kelly stared at him in amazement. "You knew him?" Kelly asked eagerly. "You knew Mako? You never said you knew Mako! What was he like? Was he as big as they say?" She tapped at the keyboard again. "I've never even seen a photo of him. Were his teeth really like that? Did you ever see him in action?"

"Whoa, slow down!" Sam told her, "I never knew him. But I have, er, met his Hunter."

"Wow," breathed Kelly, "I'd love to talk to the guy, pick his brains about training. Of course, he's probably dead by now."

"I guess," Sam agreed carefully, "But what I want to know is, how does a dog that's been dead for twenty years sire puppies?"

"The wonders of artificial insemination, Sam," Kelly grinned. "It's taken them this long to find a suitable complementary blood line to cross him with. I'm glad they did, though," she smiled at Morgan, who was washing Lemmy's ears, which the larger pup bore with good grace. "I'd love to have got a look at him. Even a picture. I've traced his lines, trying to work out where the traits may have come from – if they're not just exaggeration that got better without each retelling – people who breed dogs keep more careful records than most human communities…"

She started showing him some of the sideline work she'd done over the years, and he was amazed at the depth of the research she'd done.

"When I was a kid, Bobby did say that Wildhunt dogs had some Hellhound blood," Sam remembered, "And having seen old Kali in action, well, I'm not inclined to dismiss the possibility out of hand. I mean, stranger things have happened. Hunters know that."

"The thing is, there's no test for Hellhound heritage," Kelly pointed out, "I don't even know if you could do any sort of test on them. It would be like trying to do DNA analysis on a demon that didn't take a human meatsuit. And the idea of trying to get a cheek swab from one to do even a karyotyping or basic genomic analysis, well, probably not practical."

"I guess you could find someone who's made a deal, and when their deal comes due, you could watch them get torn to pieces, then maybe try to swab the wounds for saliva?" postulated Sam.

Kelly gave him a look of amusement and snorted dismissively. "Sam, if Hellhounds are walking the Earth, even to drag evil souls off to the Pit, I for one want to be as far away as possible. Just in case they decide they're still hungry afterwards."

"That's probably sensible," agreed Sam, shuddering at the memory of Hellhounds he'd seen make themselves visible – they were not a species that was ever going to win any sort of beauty contest, unless there was a planet somewhere where animals that could be the size of small cars and looked like they were badly constructed from rotting rhinoceros hide, charred basalt and rusted mediaeval surgical instruments were somehow considered to be attractive.

They finalised their list of people to interview, and were back to discussing the genetics of Hunting dog breeding, when Sam's cell rang. He checked it, and pulled a face.

"It's just Dean," he told Kelly as she cocked an enquiring eyebrow.

"Interesting," she mused, "I thought he and Mandy we be in the middle of Round Two, at least."

Sam's eyes bugged. "You know about Dean and Mandy?" he managed.

"Everybody knows about Dean and Mandy," groaned Kelly. "She was remarkably… graphic about some of your brother's… talents."

"Oh, God," Sam moaned, as his phone chirped with a message.

_**Hope ur making me proud lil bro make her toes curl**_

"I'm gonna kill him," Sam muttered darkly.

"Trouble in Paradise?" she enquired sweetly. Sam felt his face flush.

"Er, the thing is," he stumbled, "The thing is, Dean's kind of, well, obsessed with… that kind of thing. He's obsessed with getting laid. Worse, he's obsessed with getting me laid. Seriously, it's his favourite topic of conversation. Although conversation probably isn't the correct word. Discourse, perhaps. Lecture. Verbal diarrhoea."

"I had a Hunt buddy like that for a while," Kelly sympathised, "There were days when I seriously thought that if I heard one more Hot Guys I Have Screwed story, I was going to salt and burn her."

"It's none of his damned business," Sam sighed, "And being able to hold a conversation with a member of the opposite sex doesn't mean I automatically want to jump on her!"

"She used to refer to herself as 'Aphrodite On Earth'," confided Kelly. "Seriously, what sort of sex maniac refers to themselves in the third person in that way?"

"The Living Sex God, that's who," Sam replied glumly. "You do realise that he's going to spend the next several days waggling his eyebrows and making barely double entendres every time we end up in the same grid square?"

Kelly looked thoughtful. "Maybe I should introduce your brother to Natalie," she mused. "If you get two Living Sex Deities together, would they, I don't know, set themselves on fire or something?"

"My luck is never that good," Sam muttered fatalistically, "And even if they did, they'd probably just possess a Ouija board or something, and continue to share the gory details…"

His cell rang again. With a scowl, he made to turn it off but Kelly snatched it from him, and spoke briskly.

"Hello, this is Sam's phone… oh, hi, Dean, yeah, we've got the list together, you can decide who you want to talk to tomorrow… no, I'm sorry, Sam's in the shower. I'm just going to join him. Don't hurry back. Bye!"

Sam stared at her in disbelief as she smiled serenely and handed the phone back to him. "That should shut him up," she said.

"It won't," Sam told her, "He'll be pestering me for weeks for a blow by blow description… oh, God, I don't believe I just said that…"

"Have you tried telling him a tale so tall that it's completely unbelievable?" she suggested. "That approach worked on Nat – I found that mention of chandelier dangling was usually adequate to trigger her I Don't Believe You response."

Sam looked up at the cheap light fitting. "That hardly counts as a chandelier," he observed glumly, "And it wouldn't take my weight anyway."

"Well, just tell him that I was the dangler, and you were the, uh, dangle," she suggested airily, calling Morgan away from her nap. "Give me a call tomorrow when you've decided how we should divide up the interviews. Oh, and I call dibs on not going to the Stitch & Bitch session."

* * *

You can read about Sam and Dean's encounter with Kali the elderly Hunter's dog in my Weechester story, 'The Way Of Things'. Anybody who's read 'Best Of Breed' and 'Wolf In Wolf's Clothing' will recall that Ronnie (the Jimiverse's Crankiest Werewolf) had two Wildhunt dogs before she had Joni: Wildhunt Arcturus Rising, or Arko, and before him, Wildhunt Shark Attack, aka Mako. (At the time of this story, she's back home in Oregon with Lars and Lemmy's sister, Lita, who is presumably also learning to control the fire-starting pee thing, and Connor Dean, her own pup with her pair-bond Andrew. Connor would be a couple of weeks old; presumably, it's a household that's not getting mugh sleep…)

PS Will you people stop hinting about the story in which Dean's son RJ is sent to him – there's another damned bunny hopping around, whispering snippets of that one, and it's really annoying, and I do NOT want to have to deal with that one until Randolph has been stomped (it could even be Randolph's brother Nathaniel)…

Reviews are the Astonishing Tales of Shenanigans a la Winchester Related With Relish At The Stitch & Bitch Session Of Life!*

*No chandelier dangling until appropriate safety measures can be put in place.


	10. Chapter Nine

Poor Randolph - he's only a little plot bunny, and I think his big brother Nathaniel (who's dictating 'Child's Play') and Real Life have been bullying him. But he's not to be denied.

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

Sam was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when Dean returned the next morning, doing the Strut Of Smug Self-Satisfaction (because he had never done a Walk Of Shame in his life), and he bent to pat the puppies as they trotted to the door to meet him.

"Hi there, boys," he greeted them, their little tails wagging, "I hope Sam didn't keep you two awake all night – hey, Sam!" he enthused as Sam emerged, making a show of looking into the bathroom behind his little brother. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything..."

"No, you're not," Sam told him shortly. "And if you do that again, you'll sprain your eyebrows."

"Hey, how can a guy who got laid last night be so grumpy so quickly?" Dean enquired cheerfully.

"Dean," Sam turned a Bitchface #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean) on his older brother, "Kelly came over to help me sort out the list of people we need to talk to. That's all."

"Really?" leered Dean. "That's all you did?"

"Well, no," admitted Sam, "She has an interest in breeding..."

Dean suddenly looked panicked. "Sam," he began anxiously, "I think you'd better make it clear to her that you're only in it for the mutually consenting fun – seriously, bro, I know the type, one minute it's the dancing duvet, and then when you're putting your boots back on, the next thing you know, she'll be wanting you to meet her family, then she's talking about the reception venue, and whether you should name the first one after Great Uncle Marion or Grandma Ursula, if you have to, tell her that our family carries some dreadful genetic mutation and you'd never forgive yourself if it was born with Bongo-Whoopee Syndrome ..."

"Not breeding humans, you idiot!" snapped Sam, "Dogs! Studying the genetics of the Wildhunt bloodlines, and we talked about that. She's got some really interesting ideas about the supposed Hellhound heritage of those dogs – she doesn't know that it's real, but some of the stuff she's done research on might be really important for us, if it ever happens that we end up breeding from Lemmy or Lars. And I didn't get laid."

"Come on, Sam," wheedled Dean, smiling broadly, "I'm not angry; I'm proud! I'm not going to tear you a new one – I thoroughly approve! You don't have to play coy with me."

"You're right, I don't," Sam shot back, "Because there's nothing to be coy about. Research, and discussion about Hellhound lineages. End of story."

"End of story?" pressed Dean.

"Yeah, end of story."

"Ah, Sam," Dean smiled fondly, "I never did work out how a guy your size could be so shy." His eyebrows risked injuring themselves again. "Although I think women find that adorable. So, how many rounds? At least two, I hope, plus at least one complaint from the next room about the noise..."

"Dean!" Sam yapped in irritation, "There – was – no – sex!"

"My sources tell me otherwise," Dean said breezily, "Seriously, it's cool. I wish you'd do it more often. So, let's get breakfast, and I want details. Did you leave the lights on?"

"Even if we did anything, which we didn't, I wouldn't tell you, you prurient jerk," muttered Sam with a searing _Bitchface_ #5™ (My Private Life Is SO None Of Your Business, Jerk). "Let's go eat, and we'll sort out who's going to talk to which disappeared person's contacts."

"Okay," Dean agreed amiably, "So, was she a screamer?"

"I hate you."

They took the pups and returned to a nearby diner where they bought a take-away breakfast, then sat on a park bench in the wan autumn sunshine, letting Lars and Lemmy explore and play while they discussed their assignments.

"Okaaaaay, I'll take the yoga teacher, the stripper, the bar tender, and the masseuse," decided Dean, glancing at the spreadsheet. "You and Kelly can do the rest. Then do each other again."

"Dean," Sam growled, "Shut up about it." He scanned the list. "Any reason you've picked them?"

"They sound like the hot women," Dean pointed out.

"I should've guessed," muttered Sam. "The only reason I ask is that, for a start, you'll see there that the masseuse has a day off; if you want to talk to her, she'll be at her Stitch & Bitch meeting today…"

"Okay, I won't take the masseuse," Dean amended, "I'll take… oh, the belly dancer," he grinned, "Sounds like somebody I'd really like to talk to."

"Uh, you sure about that?" Sam pressed, "Because…"

Before he could say anything else, a small fluffy maelstrom of rassling puppies rolled past, with Lemmy, Lars and Morgan all trying to chomp each others' tails, ears and paws.

"Hi guys," they heard Kelly behind them, "You got the list sorted out?"

"Hi there, Kelly," Dean's eyebrows went into overdrive, "Did you SLEEP well LAST NIGHT?"

"Hmmm, eventually," she smiled serenely, "I had a shaggy roommate who just wanted to play all night…"

Sam's mouth open and shut a couple of times, then he turned red and looked back to his laptop. "So," he began, "Dean's picked his interviewees, so if you can take over a few…"

She looked at the list. "No problem," she said, "I'll just take the next ones on the list. Remember, though, no Stitch & Bitch."

"Okay, okay, I'll do the Stitch & Bitch," sighed Sam.

"Well, you're halfway there," Dean suggested, "If you can get someone to teach you to stitch, you'll have it down pat in no time!"

"I really do hate you," muttered Sam.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

The Hunters spent the weekend inveigling interviews with the people they'd identified as having been contacts with the disappeared dog owners, and met up again late on Sunday, at an outdoor café where they could take the pups with them, to compare notes.

"What the hell are you doing?" hissed Dean malevolently.

"Ribbing," replied Sam, frowning in concentration.

"I can see what you're doing," Dean snarled, "What I want to know is, _what_ the hell are you _doing_?"

"I just told you," Sam said with some exasperation. "Ribbing. Knit two, purl two. It gives a sort of ribbed effect, like vertical raised stripes."

"Sam," Dean asked in a dangerous tone, "_Why_ are you _knitting_?"

"Well, you didn't want to do the Stitch & Bitch," Sam shrugged, "And neither did Kelly, so I went."

"You were supposed to talk to people who last saw one of the disappeared dog owners!" insisted Dean, "You weren't supposed to join in!"

"Well, it would've looked totally weird and possibly stalkerish if I'd just showed up and wanted to sit with a group of women I've never met before," Sam replied. "And they were really nice about it. Lars had a great time – I think if he had one more piece of cookie or pastry, he might've exploded." He glanced down at the pup, who was lying in a comfortable heap with his brother. Lars looked up, yawned, twitched the very end of his tail a few times, burped heartily. Lemmy stirred just enough to give him an accusing look. "There was one lady, a retiree, who's been teaching knitting her whole life, she was really good…"

"Sam," Dean intoned seriously, "I need you to listen to me, and I need you to listen carefully. Men. Do. Not. Knit."

"They totally do," Sam countered, "Knitting was actually a male-dominated activity for hundreds of years. In the Hebrides and parts of Scotland, you were deemed a sissy if you couldn't knit."

"Yeah, but that's coming from men who wore skirts, Sam," Dean protested.

"Look, it was a good cover to talk about the woman who vanished," Sam told his brother, "There was more than one person who thought she was acting weird – two other women heard her say she was suddenly going to throw in her corporate job and move to Wisconsin to do volunteer research into zebra mussel control in Lake Michigan."

"It can't be a djinn," Dean muttered, "Because nowhere in the strangest interpretation of what might constitute a happy 'normal' life for me is there a little brother who knits…"

"Shut up, jerk," snapped Sam, "Oh, look what you made me do, I lost count!"

"Hey guys," they heard Kelly's voice behind them. "So, what's up?"

"He made me drop a stitch," griped Sam, fishing for the offending loop with one needle.

"Sam here is experiencing a crisis of testosterone," Dean informed her. "Maybe you can help him out with that, later?" His eyebrows did their Olympic trampolining routine.

"Oh, I'd be happy to help him with that right now," she purred.

"What?" Sam yelped in astonishment.

"Go ahead," Dean told her breezily, "Just pretend I'm not here."

"Just leave this to me, Sam," she instructed in a sultry tone.

Carefully, she reached out and took the knitting from his unresisting hands, and expertly flicked the dropped stitch back onto the needle. "There you go," she handed it back, "If you're going to keep it up, you might want to get a small crochet hook, it's really handy for retrieving dropped stitches before they start to unravel it all."

"Oh. Er, thanks," Sam stammered, "Actually, yeah, that would be a good idea, maybe a size B or C would be appropriate…"

"Huh?" Dean gawped at his brother. "Sam, I don't want to know how you know about crochet hook sizes…"

"A couple of the women at Stitch & Bitch were doing crochet," Sam interrupted.

"Didn't I just tell you I didn't want to know how you know about crochet hooks?" Dean yapped irritably. "Seriously, Sam, men should not need to know about stuff like that! The only thing you should know about that comes in sizes B and C is cup size!"

"Is he always this grumpy?" asked Kelly.

"I am NOT grumpy!" grumped Dean grumpily.

"Well, a lot of the time, he's cheerfully annoying," Sam told her, "But sometimes, he's crankily annoying instead. For instance, when recon for a job goes, uh, unexpected." He tried to contain his smirk, but failed.

"Yeah, yeah, laught it up, bitch," Dean scowled. "I totally blame you and your stupid list."

"Dean, all the info was there," Sam shot back, "I told you to check it carefully – it's not my fault if you couldn't see past the words 'yoga teacher' or 'stripper' or 'bar tender'…"

"Interviews not go so well?" asked Kelly solicitously.

"Oh, they were just peachy," scowled Dean, "After I found out that Sam had sent me to a Try It Out yoga class, I could hardly move for the rest of the day! And the stripper turned out to be in her sixties, and working as a Fatagram lady!"

"Well, at least you got to go and drown your sorrows whilst talking to the bar tender," Kelly was clearly trying very hard to sound sympathetic and refrain from laughing.

"Oh, yeah, drowning my sorrows," Dean practically snarled, "At the bar where the bar tender works. The bar called the Rainbow Unicorn. I got my ass pinched! Twice!"

"Well, you're an attractive man, Dean," Sam pointed out.

"What about the belly dancer?" asked Kelly.

"Oh, very educational. Mirza is highly acclaimed, I found out," Dean replied, "And is widely known as one of the most talented exponents of raqs baladi this side of the States."

"Well, why the long face?" asked Kelly.

"Raqs baladi is a traditional style of Middle Eastern dance," Sam told her.

"Male Middle Eastern dance," grumbled Dean. "He had a gig at the Rainbow Unicorn." He glared at Sam, who was openly grinning. "And he pinched my ass, too! See, this is what happens when men start knitting," he complained.

"Of course, it does take a man secure in his own masculinity to knit," Kelly opined. "It's like, it's such a girly thing to do, only a really manly man could pull it off."

"You think?" chorused the Winchesters, both astonished.

"Definitely," she asserted, pulling out a seat at their table and sitting down.

"Well, I'm sure you've already made your mind up about Sam's… manliness," Dean's eyebrows resumed their demented dancing.

'It's an extremely manly manliness, for sure," Kelly assured him, "So, now that we've affirmed Sam's machismo, and established that Dean has had more education about traditional dance styles than he ever wanted to, what did you guys find out about our disappearing dog owners? Because I gotta tell you, what I was hearing was so out there, I don't think I could make it up."

They compared notes and discovered that all the disappeared dog owners had suddenly decided to make drastic lifestyle changes before vanishing. The bank executive who announced her intention to travel to Italy to research the history of pasta, the bus driver who discovered a passion for making cheddar cheese and intended to go to England to study, the sales assistant who experienced a sudden urge to build a boat entirely out of recycled plastic bottles and sail it to Hawaii, the chef who wanted to move to the Amazon and open a naturist croquet centre, the teacher who saw the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast and heard the Mother Of God instruct her to leave her job, migrate to French Polynesia where she should train to swim around Tahiti to draw attention to the plight of the endangered Tahiti Flycatcher.

"So, these people suddenly got these ideas about massive life changes, and apparently went for it," summarised Dean.

"The ones who wanted to move to the other side of the US, I haven't been able to trace," Sam added. "They never showed up where they said they were going. But they appear to have made the decision themselves – hence, never followed up as 'suspicious' by police agencies."

"Make an outlandish decision, then disappear," mused Kelly. "So, are we talking some sort of mind control? A coven laying a geis on victims?"

"Shapeshifter impersonating people, then killing them?" postulated Dean. "Siren messing with people for the fun of it?"

"Whatever it is, it's connected to the Canine Academy," Sam asserted. "We gotta look there for evidence of what it is. If it's a coven, we gotta find their altar. If we're sneaky, we can check the staff for fugliness, then figure out how to tackle them." He sighed. "Meanwhile, let's eat, I'm hungry."

"Sounds like a plan," grinned Dean. "Of course, if you kids would like me to head off and catch up with Mandy to get OUT OF YOUR WAY while you work out our NEXT MOVES…"

"Is there something wrong with your face?" asked Kelly.

"Yeah, it's attached to the front side of a jerk," griped Sam, flushing at his brother's words.

"So, I think we'll have some wings for the boys," Dean perused the menu, "And something with a lot of red meat in it for me – that visit to the Rainbow Unicorn drained my testosterone levels, and I don't want to disappoint Mandy." He paused thoughtfully, then took a small silvered blade out of his jacket. "Give me your arm, Sam," he commanded, taking hold of the required limb and making a small cut.

"Hey!" yelped Sam, pulling his arm away, to inspect the small cut, "What the fuck was that for?"

"Just checking," shrugged Dean. "A Winchester man suddenly starts knitting, that's seriously weird. I just wanted to make sure that you weren't the latest victim of the dog owner disappearer."

"Jerk."

* * *

Reviews reassure the plot bunny, and make him whisper more confidently!


	11. Chapter Ten

Randolph has been hiding under a pile of Risk Assessments for more than a week, but I dug him out. He's been traumatised, poor little thing. It's not easy, dictating your story when your older brother keeps trying to shout you down.

* * *

**Chapter Ten**

The Winchesters arrived well before puppy classes started, and sat watching the instructors arrive for work in the Impala's mirrors.

"So, how did it go last night?" Dean's eyebrows were apparently determined to set some sort of waggling endurance record.

"It felt like it took forever," Sam replied with a yawn, watching the mirror on his side.

"That's my boy!" chirped Dean. "Because in the bedroom, nice guys really do finish last, and I'd hate to think you were a selfish asshole between the sheets, I taught you better than that."

"When you texted me with another one of your totally inappropriate messages, I was trying to find the beagle lady!" snapped Sam.

Dean looked puzzled. "Well, that's new," he mused. "I've heard it called 'the little man in the boat' before, but..."

"Dean!" yapped Sam, with a scorching Bitchface #12™ (I Am Going To Pretend I Didn't Hear What You Just Said You Disgusting Individual), "I was trying to track down one of the vanished dog owners! The one who suddenly told people that she intended to move to Maine to open a manscaping salon for island-dwelling lobstermen! We were comparing notes!"

"Is that what kids are calling it these days?" Dean smirked irritatingly. "Is that what you called it at college?"

"Seriously, we were cross-checking each other's searches," insisted Sam.

"Informed consenting adults, Sam," nodded Dean judiciously. "What you do with a like-minded lady is up to you, bro. Provided there's no knitting involved."

"Jerk," muttered Sam. "That's the last of the instructors – none of 'em look fugly in a mirror, so we can rule out a siren. So let's go in to class. Did you bring your socks?"

"Right here, Sam," Dean indicated his feet as he climbed out of the car.

"No, your scent socks," Sam corrected, "You were supposed to wear a couple of socks under your shirt, to get your scent on them. For tracking."

"Well, I can just use the ones I'm wearing," Dean shrugged.

"Oh, gross!" grimaced Sam. "The idea is to give a pup a strong smell to follow – not to suffocate him with your dirty laundry! How long have you been wearing them, anyway?"

"They were clean on last week," replied Dean dismissively. "It'll give the little guy extra clear signals to follow. Won't it?" He bent down to hook up Lemmy's lead, and the puppy butted against his leg for more pats.

"I got this job all wrong," griped Sam, "I shouldn't be worrying so much about Lemmy – you're the one who should be kept on a leash and taught some basic civilisation."

"Funny you should mention that," the Living Sex God's divine eyebrows went into overdrive again, "Because last night, Mandy suggested something very similar, and..."

"AAAAAARGH!" squawked Sam, Bitchface #6™ (I SO Do NOT Want To Hear The Gory Details Of One Of Your Sexual Conquests, Jerk) manifesting instantaneously, "Too! Much! Information!"

"Okay, okay," sighed Dean, as they headed into the Canine Academy, "You and Kelly better just stick to you, _ahem,_ cross-checking."

"Jerk."

As they made their way past the office, Sam noticed a large poster on the notice board; it had a large picture of a show-clipped poodle being offered up for adoption.

"That's new," mused Sam, "It wasn't here on Friday."

Dean scanned the poster. "That's Giselle," he said, "She's in my class. She's a really friendly dog – Lemmy likes her. Can't say the same for her owner, though."

Sam thought back to the previous week. "Was she the kind of large lady who wore an expression like a cat's ass while you and Lemmy were strutting your stuff?"

"There's always one sore loser," smirked Dean, "And she was totally jealous of Lemmy's effortless awesomeness. Giselle's been having some trouble learning the stance – she just needs more practice, Mrs Blackman says, she's actually pretty bright..."

"Hey guys," they heard Kelly's voice behind them. Lars and Lemmy bounded to exchange greeting-sniffs with Morgan.

"Hey, Kelly," Dean's grin could only be described as shit-eating, while his eyebrows could only be described as gymnastic. "So, did Sam manage to FIND THE BEAGLE LADY for you last night?"

"No," she answered somewhat bemused, as from behind her Sam deployed Bitchface #10™ (Tonight, You Die In Your Sleep). "He spent at least an hour, with three completely different approaches, but nope, no good. I had a go after that, with the same result. Not a squeak."

Dean looked at them both pityingly. "It's not right," he said softly, "Two young people like you, it's just not right, where did I go wrong, Sam..."

"If we could just get back to the job here," Sam muttered through clenched teeth.

"Er, yeah," Kelly eyed Dean dubiously, "You see anything in your mirrors this morning? I got nothing."

"Nope, siren's a bust," Sam told her, "But one of Lemmy's classmates is up for adoption."

"Yeah?" Kelly studied the poster. "Why?"

"It doesn't say," Sam replied. "It does seem kind of sudden, though. She was getting pretty intense about it last week."

Kelly looked thoughtful. "I wonder if it's got something to do with..." her expression changed to one of annoyance. "Shit! Shit!"

"You wonder if it's got something to do with shit?" Dean sounded bemused.

"No!" she snapped, "It's just occurred to me that we missed something with our interviews over the weekend."

"I'm pretty sure we talked to everybody," Sam said.

"We missed some_thing_, not some_body_," Kelly clarified. "We asked about the people who disappeared – what about their dogs? What happened to their dogs? I kind of doubt that you could take a dog with you to go and study pasta in Italy, or cheese-making in England. All those people had brought their dogs to Polly's Canine Academy, right? So, when their owners disappeared – what happened to the _dogs_?"

Sam stared at her. "Damn," he said finally, eyeing the poster and following her train of thought, "So... whatever is responsible is disposing of the people, but... trying to find better owners for the dogs?"

"It's a possibility," shrugged Kelly, "And if that's what's happening, Giselle's owner could be the latest victim. I would guess already disappeared, probably dead, if the dog is up for adoption right now."

"Well, let's just see if she turns up with a different dog," Dean cautioned, "I heard some of the class talking about Giselle's owner – apparently, this isn't the first time she's changed dogs, just because the one she had wasn't doing well in the show ring. Amongst people who take it really seriously, it's depressingly common."

"We can ask Miss Polly about it, when we split up for training later," Sam suggested, "And you can go try to visit Giselle's owner. If she's in, tell here you're not really sure if you want to do the whole show thing, and, ask for her opinion, the benefit of her experience. She looked to me like the kind of person who'd respond to ego-massaging."

"Women do tend to react positively to the presence of the Living Sex God," conceded Dean with a smirk, "And we don't need any more practice at running around looking awesome, because it comes so naturally, right Lem?"

At the sound of his name, Lemmy looked up and wagged his tail.

"The Living Sex God, and his Living Sex Godlet," nodded Kelly, "Just promise me you two will let her down gently, okay?"

Sam was not entirely successful in stifling his snort of amusement as Dean glared at him.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

The first session of the morning was a massed class socialisation exercise, in which all the puppies from each group mingled. Lemmy immediately sought out three female pups for a group wrestling bout, whilst Lars peered in confusion down at the Teacup Chihuahua that strained on the end of its leash, snarling and slavering at him (under the pretence of reassuring Lars, Sam crouched down and surreptitiously exorcised Alejandro, whereupon the little dog stopped attempting to dismember Lars, and settled for a happy tug of war with a squeaky chicken instead).

"Oh, well done, Lars!" trilled Miss Polly, beaming indulgently, "Notice how the pups can learn from each other – unwanted behaviour results in the pup being ignored by the others, hence no fun! You can use the same tactic with your pup – if he's doing something you don't want him to do, try ignoring him."

"Er, Miss Polly," asked one of the other pups' owners tentatively, "What about if your dog is doing... that?" She pointed reluctantly to Lemmy, who was enthusiastically humping her leg.

"Make sure you get his number?" grinned Dean brightly. Miss Polly frowned at him, and he sighed. "Okay, come on Lemmy, leave it. Leave it. Leave it!" He grabbed Lemmy's collar, and prised him from the unfortunate lady's leg. "Sorry about that, sometimes he just... er," he finished, as Lemmy yapped happily, and transferred his racy reciprocations to Dean's leg. "Aaargh! Not cool, little dude, we do not bat for our own team, so to speak..."

"Correct him at once, Mr Page," instructed Polly. Dean reached down to pull Lemmy off his leg. The pup scooted around in a small circle in excitement until he bounced off Sam, and began to hump his leg instead.

"Dean!" snapped Sam, his face coming to the realisation that he was going to have to come up with a bitchface specifically to use on his brother's dog, "Slight PROBLEM here!"

"Well, you can't blame him for being confused," Dean shrugged, "With that hair, and those clothes, you do look kinda girly, and with that shampoo, you probably smell kinda girly, too."

"No!" snapped Sam, scowling down. Lemmy left off his humping with a happy expression of good-natured confusion. "Seriously, dude," Sam glared at Dean, "You need to pull this little guy into line."

"He is in line," Dean sniffed dismissively, "A nice straight line, thank you very much. That's better," he added as Lemmy went back to growl-wrestling with two female pups, then turned a winning smile on Miss Polly, who gave him a look that bordered on infringement of the Sam Winchester Bitchface™ trademark.

"Now, as you know, everybody will be having a try at tracking today, regardless of which class you are in," Polly announced a few minutes later, "And there's one preliminary exercise that every pup loves." She gestured to one of the instructors, who stood by with a large box. "This is all about following a scent that's right in front of your nose. It's called... follow the treat ball!"

The instructor distributed the balls amongst the handlers as they called in their pups. "Now, show the ball to your pup, and encourage him or her to push it along, and follow it," she told them, calling Max the demo dog to heel and putting the ball in front of him. Max obligingly demonstrated, rolling the ball with his nose and picking up the kibbles that erratically fell out of the holes in the ball. "Keep an eye on your leash length, and keep their attention on their own ball – don't let them try to take anybody else's. Then, just watch their little faces when the treats fall out!"

"What's this, Lars? What's this?" chirped Sam, as Lars bounced in the spot in excitement at his Alpha's tone. Sam put the ball down; the pup sniffed it, then nosed at it. The ball rolled, and as it did so, a treat fell out of one of the holes. Lars snuffled it up, yipped happily, and butted at the ball to make it roll again. "Good boy!" praised Sam, "Clever boy!"

All around him, the other puppies started to do the same thing. Max followed his own ball around through the crowd, patiently letting some of the puppies follow him to see how the ball worked. "They're just adorable!" Sam exclaimed, pulling out his phone, "I gotta get some pictures of this!"

"Hey, Lemmy, look, treats, man!" Dean waggled the ball in front of the larger Winchester pup. Lemmy looked confused, sniifed at it, try to glare it into submission, then growled suspiciously when the mysteriously wonderful-smelling new toy refused to spit out any treats.

"Give it a push for him, Mr Page," instructed Miss Polly.

Dean rolled it away with one toe, and it left a treat behind. Lemmy dived for the treat, then pounced on the ball, yapping at it enthusiastically. "No, chase it, Lem! Track it! Track it!" tried Dean.

"Coming through!" called Sam breezily – Lars was giving a demonstration to Alejandro the newly-exorcised Chihuahua, and together they pushed the ball along to extract the goodies inside. They cut between Dean and Lemmy, who was getting more and more annoyed with the unco-operative toy. Dean could see other owners, including Kelly, snapping away with phones or cameras as the puppies followed their treat balls.

"Get your smartass and his rat-dog friend out of my way!" yapped Dean.

"Can't talk, too busy tracking!" beamed Sam, still taking pictures and exchanging smiles with the Chihuahua's owner as Lars and Alejandro's prey veered off to the side, the two pups nudging it along. "Oh, God, I think my brain might explode from the cute."

"Or possibly from contact with a blunt instrument," grumbled Dean, "Come on, Lem, your runt brother can teach a rodent to do it, you can do it! Track it! Track it!"

With a final growl, Lemmy launched a full frontal assault on the treat ball, held it between his front paws, and began to gnaw at it determinedly.

"Don't do that!" instructed his bewildered Alpha, bending to grab at the ball. "Here, drop it! Drop it!" He tugged on it again. "Drop it, you little asshole!"

"The command is 'Give', Mr Page," Miss Polly reminded him. "You must assert your authority, calmly but firmly. A confident, capable Alpha figure is absolutely essential for the optimum development of a dog of this breed into a happy and healthy individual!"

"Uh, yeah, right," Dean mumbled. "Give, Lemmy, Give! Give! Give! Give me that!"

"Grrrrrrrrrr," went Lemmy, redoubling his efforts.

Dean looked at the expression on the pup's face, and resignation washed over him – Lemmy was in The Zone.

It's not at all uncommon for dogs, especially young dogs, to have a prey instinct so developed that, once they get hold of something that they want, they become for that moment completely focused on hanging on to it, with a strength and determination that seems impossible for such a young animal. It had happened to Lemmy before – he would get his teeth into something highly desirable and dig in like a tick on a prairie dog. It could've been Oinker Stoinker. It could've been a rope tug toy. On one memorable occasion, which resulted in Bobby using the work 'idiot' in no fewer that eleven languages and dialects, it was most of a dead skunk. On another, it was the rear fender of a police cruiser. No power on Earth could make him let go if he didn't want to. It was as if he took all the intelligence he sometimes didn't seem to have, and channelled it into hanging on to whatever highly desirable item he had in his jaws at the time.

Dean supposed it wasn't entirely surprising. Hellhounds had been bred to chase down evil souls, and not let go until the wailing, writhing Damned had been dragged to Hell. Lemmy's expression was eloquent; it clearly said, I may only be three-quarters Hellhound, and I may only be a puppy, but I most certainly am NOT going to let an ordinary not-even-dead-yet human take away my frigging treat ball.

"Come on, Lem," pleaded Dean, "This is embarrassing, dude..."

"He' so cute when he does that," grinned Sam, still wielding his camera.

With a distinct sniff of disapproval, Miss Polly called Max. The demo dog trotted over to Lemmy, and tried to roll his own ball past by way of demonstration, as he'd done for some of the other puppies.

And that was when three-quarters of all Hell broke loose.

* * *

Reviews are the Adorable Puppies Bumbling Along Following Treat Balls Across The Loungeroom Floor Of Life!*

*If you want a Winchester following a treat ball, you'll have to find a way to fill it with beer for Dean, or carrot sticks for Sam, I suppose.


	12. Chapter Eleven

I've been through and fixed the glaring continuity stuff-up in the previous chapter – the Winchesters are of course using the surname Page. It's one of the pitfalls of having two plot bunnies pestering you at once. Sometimes they cancel each other out, or one bullies the other, but little Randolph is doing his best with this one. We're struggling with it a bit, but he's cute for a plot bunny, so please be patient with us, and we'll see where it goes.

* * *

**Chapter Eleven**

The exchange only lasted for a couple of seconds, as such things mostly do. The other dog handlers were watching their own puppies' adorably cute antics with the treat balls, so it was only Dean and Polly who saw the whole thing.

Miss Polly blinked, and decided that it was some trick of the light and shadows, because for a moment, there had been a strange optical illusion: Lemmy was only half the size of Max, who quite possibly had a bit of mastiff in him somewhere, but he must've taken exception to the older dog getting to close to his treat ball, because for a moment, he seemed to have a shadow-self that loomed over Max, rippled like smoke, and had angry red crackles of light flashing across its glowing eyes...

"Mr _PAGE_!" gasped Polly, her face a picture of shock that quickly changed to dudgeon so high that it risked oxygen deprivation, "Control – your – _dog_!"

"Uh, right," stammered Dean, reeling Lemmy in and hoping that nobody noticed the residual crackling of red streaks across the pup's eyes. "Come on, Lem, don't do that."

"Grrrrrrr," went Lemmy, glaring at Max, who had taken refuge behind Miss Polly's tartan skirt. The overall effect was now more adorable than threatening – definitely "Awwwwww," rather than "Aaaaaaaaargh!" – but Polly was having none of it.

"Mr Page!" she barked, "Food defence aggression is exactly the kind of behaviour that we must not tolerate!"

"Er, we must not?" blinked Dean, thinking about how he'd react if he thought somebody was trying to muscle in on his cheeseburger and fries.

"We must not!" she reiterated. "The Rottweiler is one of the breeds, such as Pitbulls, Ridgebacks and German Shepherds, that entertain undeserved reputations for savageness, based on sensationalist press and lack of training by people who wish to use them as offensive weapons!"

"They do?" mused Dean.

"Very much so!" Miss Polly insisted. "These are intelligent breeds, Mr Page, which must be given firm, fair, consistent leadership!"

"They must?" echoed Dean.

"If you do not give that brain something to do, Mr Page," she continued ominously, "He – will – improvise!"

"Oh," responded Dean, getting a mental picture of what a three-quarter Hellhound might do if it started to 'improvise' its own amusement. "He's, uh, he's a good boy, though, he's friendly, and he's obedient, well, he comes when he's hungry, and he doesn't get into trouble, if you don't count that thing with the cop car..."

"Mr Page," Miss Polly gazed at him with a look that made his knees wobble – if she'd barked 'Sit!' at that moment, he would've done it – "This dog has the makings of a show champion, but he will not get there if he cannot learn to control himself, and you must be the one to teach him! He requires discipline, Mr Page! And, incidentally," her voice dropped to a lower, more dangerous tone, "He does NOT need the fried chicken that I observed you feeding him last week."

"But he loves wings!" protested Dean.

"They are not GOOD for him, Mr Page!" Polly said sternly. "Part of being a good dog owner is doing what is best for your dog, no matter what he likes! Would you let a child live on nothing but the things they like? What would that do for a child's physical and intellectual development, do you think? Would you feed a child nothing but Pop Tarts, Lucky Charms and Mac & Cheese?"

"Er, well," began Dean, glancing at Sam, who was watching him being upbraided.

"Of course not!" she snapped. "You are the responsible adult here, Mr Page!"

"Right, right," agreed Dean, deciding it was safest just to go with the flow.

Lemmy gave his treat ball another good chomp, and with a brittle _crack_, part of it caved in, and the pup began to use his practically prehensile tongue to snuffle up the treats.

"Yeah, he is smart!" chirped Dean with a winning smile, "That's problem-solving, that is!"

Miss Polly gave him a look that would make a Hellhound wet itself. Dean wilted.

"I shall expect improvement from you in your next class, Mr Page," she told him. "I shall expect you to comport yourself in a fashion befitting the handler of a champion in the making!"

"Er, yes, Miss Polly," Dean replied, suitably chastened; somehow, he was sure he could hear the unspoken words 'Or else' hanging in the air.

The treat balls were all emptied by the time Polly called for the separate classes to reconvene.

"You behave yourself, Mr Page," tutted Sam at his brother as he and Kelly followed Polly, Max still hiding behind her skirt. Dean flipped him off, and went to join his own class.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Teaching a dog of any age to start tracking is not ostensibly very difficult – you start by laying a short, straight trail of scent objects, interspersed with treats, perhaps, with a favourite toy at the end, then let them use their noses. It's amazing to humans how they take to it, even breeds that are recognised as sighthounds.

It's probably so impressive to humans because scent is not their strongest sense; if there was a planet somewhere where a race of canoids kept sub-sentient humanoids as pets, there would probably be clubs and associations where you could learn to compete in getting your human to follow trails of coloured spots, and it would make terribly impressive footage on the news every time a police person tracked an escaped felon after a gunfight, just by following the splashes of blood.

(On such a planet, there might even be a couple of denbrothers, the Woofchesters, who Prey upon evil things after their dam, who had also Preyed when she was younger but had tried to leave the life behind, was murdered by a demon when they were only pups – they would roam around fighting the good fight, accompanied by their humanoid Jimi, who was in fact a half-Hellman and as a consequence had some unusual traits…

"Oh, no, he's wearing lavender again! Gah! It's my least favourite colour in the entire universe! It gives me a headache!"

"Shut up, Dean, it's free colour therapy. Most dogs find it relaxing."

"Seriously, Sam, it makes me feel sick just looking at it!"

"Well, pull over, and we'll find some grass for you to eat. I wouldn't mind stretching my legs."

"It's your own fault for being such a freak – Mom must've had a fling with a Wolfhound, or something…"

"Shut up, our paternal grandfather was a Great Dane, and you know it."

"All right, Fluffy, don't scoot your ass on the carpet. Yeah, I'd like some grass, and I need to lick my balls. Maybe we can find you something dead to roll in, seriously, that shampoo you use stinks. It's no wonder you don't mate – a bitch would have to have her nose in your crotch the whole time just to avoid being overwhelmed by the stench of the stuff."

"Throwback." Sam gave his brother the expression that Dean had long ago catalogued as Womanscowl™ #5 (My Mating Habits Are SO None Of Your Business, Throwback).

"Runt."

In which case, you would be reading about how the instructor called Miss Cookie had upbraided Dean by insisting "Do NOT let him play with his tablet while you're talking to him, Mr Buster! Juvenile humans should NOT be allowed to play with electronic devices whilst they are in a learning environment! Would you let your pups chew on their squeaky toys while they are in school? Of course not!")

Socks are a common training aid; they are small and cheap and light, and easy to wear inside your shirt for half an hour or so to scent them, and easy to wash when they become muddy or replace if they become too badly damaged. It is also possible that a long time ago, around the time socks were invented, dog owners have realised that dogs have a definite fondness for seeking socks out wherever they may be – laundry hamper, washing basket, under the bed, inside boots, or in the dryer – so using them for tracking training is just utilising this instinct to find socks to good advantage.

Lars' sire Jimi Junior once tracked a dead man across fifty years, following nothing but the faint cosmic signature of an individual left on a photograph. His dam fought her way clear of the Infernal Pack, and located Jimi Jr on the earthly plane when it was time to whelp her pups, following a scent that she had encountered, in the fluid and shifting 'time' of the Pit, nearly 1,000 years previously. So really, thought Sam as the pup made his way unerringly along the trail baited with socks, it would've been more surprising if Lars _hadn't_ shown such aptitude.

"Well done, Mr Page!" Miss Polly beamed, while Max waved his tail and whuffed as if congratulating the youngster, "He is an exceptional animal, just exceptional!"

"Well, I think it's because he's clearly having fun," Sam demurred, "And it's something of a novelty – usually, he gets told off for going sniffing for socks. Speaking of which," he reached down and took the final sock from Lars, who was having a surreptitious chomp on it, and corrected him firmly.

"You have great potential as a handler too, Mr Page," Polly told him, and Sam blushed slightly, "What a team the two of you will make!"

She had them let Lars and Morgan off their leads for some play, and Sam used the break to ask about the dog for adoption.

"It's just that my uncle lost his dog recently," he said, turning on the sad puppy eyes, "And I think he's nearly ready to look for a new four-legged best friend. He prefers intelligent dogs," Sam went on, reading her expression, "He's a widower, and he'd be looking for a dog to be his constant companion, but not a lap dog, so it will have to be a people dog who likes to be active…"

"Oh, that would be Giselle," sighed Miss Polly, frowning slightly. "I would of course want to meet your uncle, and speak to him – I would want to satisfy myself that he was a fit and proper person to look after her, and appreciate her for what she is…"

"I'm sure that your uncle would want to talk too," prompted Kelly, "He'd be keen to meet the dog, and hear about her background, and know why she was being put up for adoption."

"Well, it's one of those situations where I think the dog will be better off in another home," confided Miss Polly. "Some people just don't take their responsibilities to a living, feeling companion seriously! Barbara was unhappy with her, just because she wasn't coming up to showing standard quickly enough! It's not the first time she's done that, you know – I won't have her back again, either. Not that that will be a problem, anyway," she added, with a small vicious stab of satisfaction.

"Oh, has, er, Barbara given up on wanting to show?" Sam asked conversationally.

"Barbara has decided to travel to Norway to become a camel trainer. And good riddance. Giselle will be better off without her. Some people just don't deserve to have dogs," Miss Polly finished with a disdainful sniff.

Sam and Kelly made suitably shocked and agreeing tutting noises, then Miss Polly suggested that they try a turn in the tracking trail.

When the training session had finished, they were headed back to rejoin the other classes, when an instructor approached Miss Polly and told her something in a low voice.

"Er, is something wrong?" asked Sam solicitously.

"It's your brother, Mr Page," sighed Polly, with the resigned look of a kindergarten teacher who has found one of her more boisterous charges eating the Play Doh again, "The Showing class all had a try at tracking too, just for fun. Apparently, when it was your brother and his pup's turn, there was some… misunderstanding."

"Oh, uh," stuttered Sam, "Did Lemmy, er, not get the idea?"

"Well, yes and no," Miss Polly explained. "Yes, in that he got the idea that he was supposed to look for the socks."

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" asked Sam.

"Yes, that is the aim of the basic exercise," Polly nodded. "Unfortunately, the socks he enthusiastically went looking for turned out to be the ones your brother was wearing. He attacked his feet, and tangled him in the lead, so your brother is now in the sick bay with a twisted ankle."

* * *

The tracking prowess of the pups' parents takes place in 'Best Of Breed' (for their Hellhound dam) and 'Pregnant Pause' (for Jimi Junior, their sire).

Reviews are the Adorable Puppies Tracking You Along The Line Of Socks Of Life!*

No. You cannot have Winchesters in a harness, on a lead. Just… no.


	13. Chapter Twelve

**SPECIAL BONUS FEATURE: Leaked excerpt from a script that was found floating in space in the vicinity of an eddy in the fabric of the space-time continuum!**

**Title card: SUPERPUPTURAL**

_Music plays_

Carry on, my wayward pup,  
There's be peace when this is up,  
Lay your weary paws to rest,  
Don't you howl no more…

_Title credits roll_

Jensen Hackles

Jared Pupalecki

Musher Collins

Jim Retriever

Mark 'German' Shepherd

**Story by**

Labrapito

**Additional material by**

Fleaelisabeth

Gorgia

K9dragon

Cold nose

Barklebead

Snarla M

KnightMarrowboneJellyOfCamelot

The Blue Heeler Orleans

Akitaannie

Hesta Highland White

SCENE ONE:

*Dean is sniffing at a damp patch on the sidewalk*

**DEAN:** Oh, yeah, she wants it bad…

**SAM:** Dean, can you just get your mind in front of your waist for a moment, and concentrate on the job?

**DEAN:** Do not underestimate the power of the Living Sex Dog, Sammy.

**BOBBY:** What are you two idjits doing?

**SAM:** We're supposed to be on the trail of a werehuman, but all Dean can do is go sniffing around after bitches in heat.

**BOBBY:** Dog's tits, boy, you got a one track mind.

**DEAN:** Sam's the one who should be sniffing. Do you even remember how to hump the furniture? You need to get mated, Sam.

*Sam pulls one of his trademark Womanscowls*

**BOBBY:** So, what have you got?

**SAM:** It's a cursed monster; every full moon, it turns from a perfectly ordinary dog into a slavering, ravenous creature with the crazed urge to feed on canines.

**DEAN:** Aaaaargh! A giant flea!

**SAM:** No, you throwback, the werehuman!

**DEAN:** I knew that, runt.

*sudden flapping noise, and Castiel materialises standing nose-to-nose with Dean*

**CASTIEL:** Hello Dean.

**DEAN:** Aaaargh! Cas, how many times do I have to say it? Personal space! Why can't you just shove your nose into a guy's crotch like normal people?

**CASTIEL:** We share a profound bond, Dean – I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised you from Ablution.

**BOBBY:** The idjits here are trackin' a werehuman – can you sense anything nearby?

*Castiel does the Eye-Sex Stare Of Doom at a nearly bush, then cocks his leg against it. Crowley leaps out from behind it.*

**CROWLEY:** Yaipe, that was just uncalled for! *He shakes vigorously* Oh, hello, Bobby, I don't suppose there's any chance of a quick sniff…?

*Bobby curls his lip and growls. Crowley's ears droop*

* * *

**Chapter Twelve**

"I'm fine," protested Dean as automatically as a cheerleader checking her lipstick after a particularly interesting session in the janitor's cupboard, "No need to flap at me, Francis."

"Dean, what the hell happened?" demanded Sam, exasperation taking over from worry when he saw that his brother was not seriously hurt.

"Just a bit of minor confusion over the object of the exercise," Dean waved a hand dismissively. "Seriously, why would you teach your dog to look for them if you don't want him to find them? It's not his fault," he reached down to scratch the ears of Lemmy, who was sniffing curiously at the ice pack on his Alpha's ankle.

"The idea it to teach the dog to find the scent, not the actual sock," Sam began, but as the word left his mouth, Lemmy launched himself at Dean's other ankle. "Dude, what the hell?"

"Don't say that word!" yapped Dean, disengaging Lemmy from attempting to maul his other ankle, "It's all that instructor's fault!"

"What?" demanded Sam, "How can it be your instructor's fault?"

"Well, she's the one who showed me how to train my dog to attack my s-words," sulked Dean, "Tracking, my ass."

"Dean, the sock is just a convenient way to..."

"Aaaaaargh!" Lemmy renewed his assault on Dean's sock, tail wagging furiously. "I said, don't say it!"

"Look, the... s-word is just a way to bait a trail with scent markers for an inexperienced dog..."

"Well, given the dog is inexperienced, it's not surprising that he's made a connection," Dean defended loyally, "I told you he's smart."

"This is ridiculous," huffed Sam.

"It's confusing, is what it is," declared Dean, "I mean, even the command, 'Seek', it even sounds the same. 'Seek'. 'Sock'. See? No, no, Lemmy..."

"Growf! Grrrrrrr," went the pup.

"Anyway, he went after the nearest s-word he could find. I'd say that makes him the smartest out of all of them, right fella?" Lemmy beamed doggily up at his Alpha's happy tone of voice.

"Dean, dogs cannot speak English!" snapped Sam. "I don't believe you've trained your dog to attack your... s-words!"

"You'll be laughing out the other side of your bitchface if we're ever attacked by S-word Monsters," humphed Dean, "You were terrified of the S-word Monster when you were a kid, after one of your asshole classmates told you about it," he added in a low voice, "S-word Monsters that live under kids' beds, and wait for the chance to grab odd s-words that you leave on the floor, which makes them bigger, until they're big enough to grab your socks _while you're still wearing them_... no, Lem, no!"

"Sock, er, S-word Monsters don't exist," muttered Sam, his face flushing.

"Well, we can't know for sure," Dean declared ominously, "I did spend nights going through Dad's journal looking for some way to trap and kill them..."

"Look, you gotta correct this, and let him know you don't want him to do that," Sam stated firmly. "For a start, you'll go through so-, uh, s-words pretty damned fast."

"Well, once he gets an idea in his head, it can be pretty difficult to dislodge," Dean pointed out.

"Huh," muttered Sam, "Wonder who he reminds me of..."

"Mr Page," Polly addressed Dean as she made her way into the sick bay, "I do hope that you have not been badly injured?"

"If only he'd landed on his head, that wouldn't have damaged anything important," Sam said brightly.

"I just gave it a bit of a twist, after an inevitable misunderstanding over a training exercise," replied Dean defiantly. He wiggled his foot to prove the point. "It will be fine."

"Nonetheless, I think you should withdraw from training for the rest of the day," she instructed, "I would not want you to reinjure yourself."

"I think Miss Polly is right, bro," Sam nodded vigorously and semaphored meaningfully with his eyebrows, "You don't want to overtax that ankle. And I'm sure you can find something constructive to do."

"What? Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely," Dean agreed brightly. "Lemmy has probably had enough excitement for one day anyway, huh? Maybe we can go back to our room, and, and, and practise sitting calmly, and, uh, ignoring hosiery."

Polly gave him an appraising look. "Mr Page, that is quite possibly the most sensible thing I've heard you say," she announced finally. "I'm afraid that I have an appointment this afternoon, and will have to leave you," she told Sam and Kelly in a tone of regret, "You may if you wish join one of the other classes – one that will allow you to train at a level that will be suitably engaging for their talents," she gave Dean a look that suggested he might be capable of engaging a not-too-bright stick insect on one of his better days, "Or you may do some training yourselves, provided you allow them plenty of breaks and opportunities for play."

"That would be great," smiled Kelly, "I'd like to have another go with a different scent, and maybe cut back on the distance to the next sock..."

"Grrrrrrrrr!"

"Aaaaaaaargh! Lemmy, no!"

Sam was pretty sure that Max, Morgan and Lars exchanged the same sort of look that he swapped with Kelly and Miss Polly.

"We'll be fine," Sam assured Miss Polly, "We'll, uh, practise a bit of everything, and maybe get out the treat balls again. They really enjoyed that."

"Very well," Miss Polly said, "I shall see you later, Mr Page, Miss Whitestripe. Behave yourself, Mr Page."

"Behave mys...?" Dean glared at her retreating back. "Huh," he sniffed when she had left, "The Living Sex God does not need anybody to tell him how to behave himself."

"Well, your mojo isn't working on Miss Polly," noted Sam seriously, "I think you might be losing it, bro."

"She doesn't count," griped Dean, "She's obviously an alien."

"Are you sure he didn't hit his head?" asked Kelly doubtfully.

"Pretty much," sighed Sam, "He makes even less sense when he's concussed. So, do you think your mojo and your ankle are up to paying a visit to Barbara before she heads off to Scandinavia ?"

"If she's not already dead," added Kelly darkly.

"Absolutely," confirmed Dean, reaching to put his boot back on, "If she's gone, I'll look for a Norwegian phrase book – if she's still there, I'll stake out her place and watch for whatever it is that's coming after her, and call you."

"Make sure you do," instructed Sam, "Don't do the whole gung-ho solo hero thing unless it's absolutely necessary, do you understand me?"

"Ooh, you're really impressive when you go all assertive like that," grinned Dean, "No wonder Miss Polly thinks you'll make a wonderful handler."

"Jerk. I mean it," scowled Sam.

"We have a perfect excuse and opportunity to poke around a bit here, try to find some evidence about what happened to the missing persons' dogs," said Kelly.

"I think it would be a great idea for you two to go POKE AROUND in her office," Dean's eyebrows oscillated insinuatingly, "Or back at our room, or anywhere, really..."

"Okay, then." Sam shot his brother a silent Bitchface #5™ (My Private Life Is SO None Of Your Business, Jerk) and consulted his watch. "If I don't hear from you within an hour, I'm gonna come looking."

"Aw, gee-whiz, Mom," whined Dean, "Why can't I stay out late like all the other kids?"

"I hate you," Sam muttered as Dean grinned, and limped for the door with Lemmy following him. Then he smiled to himself. "Oh, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"If Barbara is too overwhelmed by the mojo of the Living Sex God, I don't want to intrude, so if that happens, just put a sock on the door..."

"Grrrrrrrrrrowf!"

"Aaaaaargh! Lemmy! Stop it!"

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Sam and Kelly, accompanied by their pups, made their way back to Miss Polly's office, and let themselves in. There was a wall of filing cabinets; the Perfect Pooches Canine Academy had been operating for quite some time, and had seen many students come through the doors. Another wall was covered with pictures of handlers and dogs, of all ages and breeds, under a large banner reading 'OUR GRADUATES'.

Kelly sighed, then started to scan through the files, while Sam started up the computer. "Maybe I'll get lucky, and find a file marked 'Dogs Belonging To People Who Have Vanished Mysteriously - Finding Them New Homes," she mused wistfully. "Or 'Disappeared People – Adopting Out Their Pets'."

"You never know," Sam consoled her, "Miss Polly strikes me as the type to file everything in a very organised fashion."

Time passed as they scanned both the paper files and the electronic files for anything that mentioned the dogs that had belonged to people who had disappeared. Lars and Morgan alternated between growl-wrestling, sniffing around the room, and tug-of-war with a bedraggled fluffy green dog toy that appeared to have been intended to resemble a cross between a gerbil and a honey badger.

"Maybe it would be under "Vanished Owners' Pets – Adopting Them Out?" Kelly wondered aloud, "Or possibly... oh!"

"No, that would be under V, for vanished, surely?" Sam replied.

"No, oh as in a noise of surprise, rather than oh as in O, the letter," corrected Kelly. "Here's a folder marked 'Rehoming'."

"Yay for OCD alphabetical ordering," commented Sam as she brought the thick file to the desk. He checked his own laptop, and they quickly ascertained that the previous owners referred to in the dog adoption files correlated with the list of people who had ostensibly left their lives for parts obscure to take up some very peculiar pursuits indeed.

"There's email here from Miss Polly to people asking about adopting these dogs, but none from the actual owners," frowned Sam, scrolling through a long list, "She's spent a lot of time vetting these people. She's not at all afraid to tell some of them that she doesn't think they are suitable to be dog owners."

"She takes this all very seriously, doesn't she?" noted Kelly, as Morgan sniffed suspiciously at a filing cabinet.

"Some people do," shrugged Sam, indicating a small glass cabinet filled with trophies. "Still, it's not immoral, it's not illegal, and it's not bad for your cholesterol. And it looks like Max really is a good boy," he added.

"She certainly thinks so," Kelly nodded to the three separate photos of the beloved Heinz Special on the desk. "Do you really know somebody who took a dog to OC, Obedience Champion?" she queried, "Or were you just getting into the spirit of this?"

"Yeah, we really do," smiled Sam, "She's a Hunter. Well, she's slowed down a bit now – she's got a kid who's only a few weeks old." He began to laugh out loud. "The little guy arrived a bit earlier than expected, and Dean was there, and had to act as midwife. It totally freaked him out!"

"Oh – my – GOD!" Kelly gasped, "Oh, I would pay money to have seen the look on his face!"

"Anyway, she Hunted with the sister of this little guy's sire, his Auntie Joni," Sam explained, "And she was adopted by his sister, Lita. Wasn't she, Lars?". He looked up. "Lars? Hey, where are you?"

Lars had sniffed his way across the office, and was nosing at a waste basket. Ignoring Sam, he stared hard at it, and stood with his hackles bristling, and his teeth bared.

"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr," he went.

"Oh, God, what's he found?" asked Kelly. "Morgan cornered a mouse in the trash last week, and the noise she made, you'd have thought she was a police dog bailing up a burglar."

Sam stood up, drew his knife, and approached the receptacle carefully.

"Hey, buddy," he said to the pup, "What have you got there?"

It as mostly paper and tape, the usual detritus of an office setting – he poked at the contents with the knife, and began to remove pieces.

"Is there anything there?" Kelly asked.

"Just paper," Sam answered, "And some Post-Its, some tape, a teabag that I think might've been used sometime last century, and... hold on."

At the bottom of the basket, carefully concealed under the other waste, was something... _slithery_...

Sam pulled it out with his knife, and Kelly swore.

It was a long, tattered piece of shredded skin.

Sam had his phone out and was calling Dean before he'd even stood fully upright, but it went through to messages. He left a frantic one, and prayed his brother would check it soon.

"Dean! We've found something. We know what it is. Call me back right away. Watch your back, bro, we're dealing with a shapeshifter."

* * *

Reviews are the Scripts From Alternative Realities Floating About In The Cosmic Space Of Life!


	14. Chapter Thirteen

A Denizen has suggested that Nathaniel is bullying Randolph. She's quite possibly right, but I am trying to encourage him to speak up. By which I mean, when the little sod sinks his teeth into my leg, I grit my teeth and refrain from threatening to turn him into an ode to delicious rabbit stew…

* * *

**Chapter Thirteen**

"Dean has our weapons in the car," muttered Sam, running a hand through his hair. "We need silver for this." Lars whined as he picked up on his Alpha's agitation. "Hey, it's okay buddy," he smiled, reassuring the pup, "You got the charms on your collar, and so does your brother. Dean won't let anything happen to him."

"I've got this," Kelly indicated the silver bracelet she was wearing, "I'm out of silver ammo at the moment, though – it's damned difficult to get good stuff. Bobby said that his usual supplier is out of action for the time being..."

"Who the hell is it?" Sam asked the universe in general. "It's gotta be one of the instructors here, they've all been here for a number of years, they'd have access to the office sometime, and they were all here today for treat ball training..."

Simultaneously, they reached for their phones.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

"Up, Lem! Up! Up! Up!" Dean waggled the corn chip just above Lemmy's nose. The pup bounced enthusiastically on the seat beside him, trying to get the extra height to grab the treat. "Up, Lemmy! Let's see you use those ears, fella! Up! Up!"

With a happy yip, Lemmy acted to get the extra height he needed.

Only not by flapping his ears and doing his hovering trick, but by standing on Dean.

"Aaaaaargh!" went Dean, as a paw slipped and slid into his groin. He winced, and cringed. This had the effect of bringing the corn chip within tongue's reach, and Lemmy snaffled it with delight, chomping contentedly.

"You're a problem solver in your own way, aint ya?" Dean managed a weak smile as he ruffled the pup's ears, then turned his attention back to Barbara's house.

'Always make sure you know what you're letting yourself in for, before you let yourself in for it.' It was one of Dad's Rules Of Hunting, and also one of Dean's Rules Of Women. He had ascertained that Barbara was in fact at home, and moving from room to room. There was no sign of anybody, or anything, else.

"Time to go charm her with our awesome, uh, charmingness," he told the pup, snapping Lemmy's lead into place. "Keep your eyes – well, in your case, your nose really, I guess – open for anything fugly."

Lemmy appeared to be doing his best, perking up his ears and putting on an adorable doggy smile as Dean knocked on the door. When Barbara answered, she looked flustered, and surprised.

"Hey there, Barbara," Dean let the Killer Smile slide into place, "How you doing?"

"Oh, er, Dean, isn't it?" Barbara recomposed herself remarkably quickly – Dean had noticed that women often did that in the presence of the Living Sex God – and smiled back. "I'm, er, a little busy at the moment, but would you like to come in?"

As Dean stepped through the door, he could see that the living room was in a state of mayhem indicative of packing in a hurry.

"Oh, are you going on vacation?" he asked solicitously.

"Oh, it's much more exciting than that!" trilled Barbara, "I'm off to start a new life, Dean! I'm going to Norway! To train camels!"

"Camels?" he echoed, not really having to try very hard to inject a note of surprise into his voice.

"Oh, yes!" she gushed, "Ever since I saw my first camel at a safari park, as a small girl, I have harboured a secret admiration for these ships of the desert, and now I have decided to stop wishing, and make my dream come true!"

"Oh, uh, well that's, that's great," he nodded, "If your job is something you love, you can't fail."

"That's just what I think!" she agreed, "But I'm sure I can take a short break for a visitor," she smiled at him, "Would you like coffee?"

"That'd be great," he said anwered, the Killer Smile reasserting itself.

"And I'm sure we can find a treat for little Lemmy here," she smiled down at the pup, and reached to pat him, "I'm sure I have some pigs' ears, all dogs just love those..."

As she went to pat him, the pup let out a snarl that would've done his father proud, and sank his teeth into her hand.

Lemmy might not have been the sharpest tool in the shed, but sometimes, a blunt instrument can achieve everything you need.

Dean didn't hesitate; Jimi Junior had had what he called 'a nose for evil shit', and he had every faith that Lemmy had inherited his father's instincts. He reached for his gun.

Unfortunately, even with Lemmy dangling from one hand, Barbara was quicker with an ornate brass candlestick on a side table, and he was out before he hit the floor.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

"Come on, come on," muttered Sam, scrolling through the footage he'd taken of treat ball training as Kelly did the same. "All I'm getting is doggy 'laser eyes'. It must be because of the indoor lighting."

"The tapetum lucidum," pronounced Kelly, "The structure in the eye that reflects visible light back through the retina. Primates don't have it. Dogs do. I guess shapeshifters must, too. I wonder if anyone has ever dissected one to see?"

"Mostly, we're usually just in a hurry to get rid of the carcass," grunted Sam, scanning his cell, "Wait, I got something." Kelly craned her neck to see his phone's screen. "It happens really fast, but I'll try to pause it... hang on... there!"

On the second try, he got it.

Standing in the middle of the treat ball exercise, smiling dotingly at the puppies all around as they chased after their balls, with a definite retinal flare, was Miss Polly.

"Oh, shit," groaned Sam, "It all makes sense. A shapeshifter impersonates somebody, hangs around for a few days to tell everyone that they've made a life-changing decision to become a slug-sexer in Outer Mongolia, then they can kill and dispose of their victim and nobody will go looking."

"They didn't come up to her standard as dog owners," Kelly added worriedly, "They didn't deserve to have dogs. She said that, some people don't deserve to have dogs."

"She said it about Barbara, the aspiring camel trainer," Sam recalled grimly, "And she implied it about Dean. I'll bet her 'appointment' involves a plan to deal with at least one more undeserving dog owner. We can't just wait for her to turn up in a Dean suit, put Lemmy up for adoption, and announce a decision to travel to Tibet to start up a program to revive the ancient art of making yak dung pottery, we gotta find him. He could be in real trouble, and he doesn't even know it. Damn, he's got the car!"

"We'll take mine," Kelly stated, putting away files, "I've got silvered blades. You got Barbara's address?"

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

His head thumping and his bad ankle aching, Dean slowly clawed his way back to consciousness.

He was no stranger to waking up in strange places, strange as in 'places he didn't know', or 'places a person might not ordinarily expect to find himself waking up'. The imbibation of enormous quantities of alcohol, or informed mutually consenting beautiful natural acts with like-minded women, or sometimes both, could have 'waking up in a strange place' as a side effect.

In a barn. In a haystack. In a wardrobe. Under a desk. Under a tree. Under a secretary. In a police cruiser. Under a police cruiser. On top of a police cruiser. On top of a police cruiser, under a secretary. In a truck tray. In a tent. On a sofa in a removals van. In a garden bed. In a ballet studio (she had been _very_ flexible, and the mirrors were awesome). On a row of clothes dryers. Inside a clothes dryer. In somebody else's bed. In somebody else's car. In somebody else's clothes. On one memorable occasion, in a shop front window.

He was also no stranger to finding himself tied to something. This also was something that could sometimes result from frisky fun times with equally broad-minded women, as he'd tried to explain to Sam (for his little brother's edification, of course) on a number of occasions before his baby bro had ruthlessly and relentlessly Bitchface™d him into silence.

However, experience had taught him that when the two things happened together – waking up in a strange place, and finding himself tied to something – there was unlikely to be alcohol, beautiful natural acts or frisky fun times of any sort in the immediate future. It was far more likely that some fugly or occult asshole, which by rights it was really his job as a Hunter to gank, was up to no good, and was planning to kill him horribly and possibly eat him, or maybe use his blood to perform an eldrich spell that man ought not wot of, or perhaps offer his bleeding corpse unto some abomination of an elder god, or otherwise inconvenience him dreadfully.

"Sonofabitch," he muttered to himself, shaking his head carefully to clear it, "What now?"

Blearily, he looked around the room. It appeared to be some sort of warehouse, a large, gloomy, dusty, echoing space with a feeling of industrial scale neglect to it. He was pretty sure that wherever he was, it would be far enough away from anything that he could yell his head off and not attract any attention.

Off to one side, he saw the faint bluish glow of a small computer screen, sitting on a forgotten crate.

Sitting in front of it was Miss Polly of the Perfect Pooches Canine Academy.

"Hey!" he called, wincing as the volume of his own voice made his head ache, "If this is some sort of payback for the whole treat ball training thing, lady, you are seriously over-reacting."

"Be quiet!" she snapped in a Voice that had been honed over many years to quell noisy charges. Dean felt his jaw snap shut. "I am busy!"

"Oh, sorry," he drawled in a way that indicated that he was anything but, "Am I interrupting an online conference of crazy kidnappers? Sorry!" he yelled, "Don't want to hold up your meeting! Let's move on to the next item on the agenda, 'abducting hot guys and tying them to," he wiggled experimentally, "Concrete pillars until they get annoyed – I gotta say, an upholstered bed head is more comfortable for this sort of thing..."

"I have something important to do," she snapped back, "Something more important than you."

"Uh-huh, well, now I know you're an alien," he scoffed with a smirk, "You got the Living Sex God tied up, and you have something more important than _me_ to do? On the computer?" He considered that. "No wonder you get along with Sam so well, he could have Angelina Jolie tied to the bed, and he'd be all, 'Hang on, I just have to look up this website about seditious subtexts in sixteenth century English poetry'..."

She turned to glare at him, the light from the screen making her eyes flare brightly in the dimness.

"Well, that explains that," humphed Dean, working out what was going on, "Although it doesn't explain why you'd pick that particular outfit, if you could pretty much have your pick. You should have stuck with Barbara, at least she's more cougar MILFish than Angela Landsburyish."

"It's called hiding in plain sight, Mr Page," Miss Polly smirked right back at him.

"So, what the hell is this?" Dean demanded. "Covering your tracks?"

"Partly," Polly admitted, "But having seen the way you treat that dog of yours, it became obvious that you were just another human who is unfit to own a dog."

Dean's stomach dropped. "Where's Lemmy?" he growled dangerously. "Lemmy! Lem!"

"He is safe and well," she told him, her face softening, "Although he certainly put up a fight. Quite a set of teeth on him, for such a young puppy. I never would've expected it from him, he's such a good natured little thing."

"He's smarter than you give him credit for," Dean snarled, "And he knows what you are. What have you done with my pup?"

"Taken action to give him a better future!" Polly hissed, her face contorting in anger. "He'll have someone to look after him properly, and train him properly! Someone who will NOT feeding him fried chicken wings! Or corn chips! He had crumbs in his whiskers!" she declared in cold triumph.

"You're planning to eliminate me because I fed him some wings?" Dean said incredulously. "Geez, over-reaction much? Are you at all familiar with the concept of proportionate force?"

"He deserves better!" Polly insisted. "He deserves someone who will do what is best for him, guide him and nurture him to realise his full potential, so he can become the champion I just know he can be!"

"He chose me!" Dean snapped, "You can't just uproot him from his family, his pack! He chose me!"

"He is young, and he will adjust," Polly smiled unpleasantly. She picked up the laptop she had been working at, and showed him the screen.

It was a poster, with FOR ADOPTION across the top of it, and under that, a picture of Lemmy at his most adorable.

"If your brother does not take him, I will find him a new home, a good home, a better owner," Miss Polly informed him.

Dean smiled slowly. "Ohhh, first you messed with my dog, that pretty much shows you got a death wish, but you go near my brother, and you will find you have dropped yourself in a world of hurt, lady," he informed her, "You'd better stop worrying about my dog, and start worrying about what I'm gonna do when I get my hands on you."

"I'll be back to deal with you later," she sniffed disdainfully, "Right now, I must attend to the welfare of a pup who needs a new home. And possibly a new name," she frowned thoughtfully, "What sort of a name is 'Lemmy', anyway? He will need something more dignified, something reflecting his heritage, and dignity, something like... Alaric, or Baldwin, or Helmut, or Waldo..."

"Waldo?" Dean blinked in disbelief, "Waldo? Don't you DARE try to name my dog Waldo, you bitch! Ohhh, I was going to gank you quick, but now I'm going to make you bleed..."

"I very much doubt that," Miss Polly smirked again. "In fact, it will happen the other way around. Now, do behave yourself. I'd hate to have to debark you."

Dean subsided into glowering silence as the shapeshifter left.

"Damn it," he muttered to himself, testing the ropes that held him. He tried yelling his head off for a few minutes, but got nothing for his trouble except his own echoes, and a sore head. All his weapons and his phone were gone, and she knew how to tie a knot like she meant it. "Why can't we just skip to the bit where I get loose, and gank her?"

* * *

Reviews are the Winchester Of Your Choice Tied To...

Um, no.

Please send me reviews, I like them a lot.


	15. Chapter Fourteen

It's good to see that Randolph isn't letting Nathaniel push him around - his bigger brother may be sitting on him, but he will not be silenced!

* * *

**Chapter Fourteen**

As Kelly's truck pulled into the street on which Barbara the aspiring camel-trainer lived, Sam immediately saw that the Impala was not there. He was out the door and running up the path to the front door before the vehicle had even completely stopped, calling for his brother, with Lars hot on his heels.

"There's nobody here," he pronounced, peering through a window as Kelly popped the lock. Drawing weapons, they entered silently.

The living room looked like somebody had been interrupted in packing in a very disorganised fashion.

"This does not look like the house of somebody systematically preparing to move to Norway," scoffed Kelly.

Lars and Morgan sniffed back and forth across the floor. Morgan growled at another sliver of sloughed skin, and Lars sniffed and gruffed at...

"Is that... is that a burn mark on the rug?" asked Kelly, crouching to examine the small scorched spot on the carpet. "Oh, it's damp just here. That's weird. How did that happen?"

"No idea," trilled Sam, as Lars moved on to bark at a hideous baroque brass candlestick on the floor. "But this has blood on it."

A search of the house failed to turn up any clue as to where the shapeshifter might have gone.

"We don't even know if your brother made it here," Kelly pointed out. "How do you even know he was actually here?"

"He was here," stated Sam, "It's, er, a brotherly intuition thing."

"Okaaaay," she replied, clearly not letting it go but not wanting to get off track right then, "So, now what?"

"Back to the Canine Academy," decided Sam grimly. "We've got silver, we've got the element of surprise, so we get the jump on her – we confront her, and beat some damned answers out of her."

The drive back through town to the Perfect Pooches Canine Academy happened to take them past the run-down motel where the Winchesters had been staying.

"Stop!" yelled Sam, and Kelly hit the brakes with a small shriek of fright.

"What? What?" she demanded, looking around frantically, "Did I hit something?"

"Go back!" Sam craned his neck, "I saw the car!"

Sure enough, the Impala was parked outside their room. And before she'd even shut off the engine, they could hear the strident barking of an unhappy pup coming from inside.

As soon as the truck stopped, Lars leapt from the vehicle, yapping frantically. Sam followed, hoping like hell that Kelly hadn't notice that the pup hadn't bothered to wait for him to open the door first. Fortunately, she had her back turned when Lars hit the door, and went right through it.

"That's Lemmy," Sam said, scrabbling with his key to let them in, "Dean! Dean! Are you in there?"

He wasn't; there was just Lemmy, tethered to a kitchenette cupboard handle by his lead. His barking subsided to whining as his brother Lars nosed at him and whuffed comfortingly, licking at his ears as Sam untied the lead.

"Something is really wrong," he muttered, "Dean would never, never leave one of the pups alone, especially not at this age..."

"Er," Kelly interrupted his musing, "There's a note here. It's addressed to you."

Sam crossed the room and grabbed up the piece of cheap paper, torn from one of his own notepads. It was written in what looked like Dean's hand.

_Dear Sam,_

_What I have to tell you will come as a shock to you. I know the realisation was a shock to me. But I also know that this is something that I want to do. It is something that I need to do._

_Ever since I went to that bar and saw the male belly dancer doing his routine, I've been fascinated by it. Yeah, sure, I scoffed at it, because there was no way I was going to admit to my little brother than was entranced by watching another guy dance. But seriously, you should've seen it! It's a really athletic, powerful form of dance, yet he made it look effortless. I've never seen anything like it! The music, the costuming, the technical and physical demands, it's an amazing art form! It was just totally awesome!_

_So, having done some serious soul-searching in the last few days, I've made a decision. I'm going to Turkey, to study raqs baladi. I'm leaving every part of my old life behind, and making a brand new start. I'm totally terrified, but totally excited, and now that I've admitted to myself what I really want to do, I can't wait!_

_I know you'll miss me, and I'll miss you too, but this is something that I really, really want to do. I'm leaving everything for you, including the car, and trusting you to look after it. I know you'll do what you think is best for Lemmy – if you can't keep him with you, please take him to Miss Polly, because she will find him a home where he can be the champion she says he can become._

_Please don't be mad at me – I don't want you to be upset, or angry, please be happy for me. I will think of you every day, and every time I dance, I will hope that you would be proud of me._

_Your big brother always,_

_Dean_

"That was NOT written by Dean," Sam stated with conviction, "I can tell you that for sure."

"Because he'd never ever in a million years decide to run away to become a male belly dancer?" asked Kelly, unable to keep the smile from her face.

"Because this letter refers to the car as an it!" yapped Sam. "He never does that! It's always she this, she that, she the other! She needs gas. I gotta check her transmission fluid. I'll be spending some quality time with my number one girl. And he didn't use the word 'bitch' once! Plus," He bent down and checked the small kitchenette refrigerator, "There's still two pieces of pizza and a slice of pie left. Dean would never leave the town, let alone the country, without finishing those off."

"The shifter must've been in a hurry, to write such an unconvincing letter," suggested Kelly.

"Good," growled Sam, "We got her on the run, now we run her down. Come on, guys," he gestured to Lars and Lemmy, "We gotta find Dean!"

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Back at Perfect Pooches, they were surprised to find that Miss Polly had returned. Yes, Mrs Blackman of the Showing classes confirmed, she was back, had returned early in fact – a cancelled appointment before her meant that she had been able to return sooner than anticipated – and was in the office.

"Perfect," Sam's smile was predatory as he headed for office, "We box her in, and start breaking bones."

"Hey," Kelly put a warning hand on his arm, "You gotta be able to ask her where your brother is."

"She can talk with broken legs," he snapped, knocking on the door.

A distracted-sounding voice called "Come in!"

Miss Polly was on the phone, and she gave them a worried smile as she was finishing the call. "Oh, hello, Miss Whitestripe, Mr Page," she greeted them, "What can I do for yooOOOUEEEEE!"

Sam was across the room and had his knife to her throat. "Where is he?" he demanded without preamble.

"Mr Page!" Miss Polly squeaked in apparent terror.

"Where – is – he?" repeated Sam, leaning on the blade a little.

"I don't know!" Miss Polly managed to squeak.

"Oh, I think you do," Sam smiled unpleasantly, "And I think you'd better tell me."

"I don't know!" Polly repeated, eyes rolling in appeal to Kelly. "I just got back from my appointment, and..."

"Er, Sam," Kelly began tentatively.

"What?" he snapped, not taking his eyes of Miss Polly's face.

"Uh, look at, you know," Kelly waved a hand at his knife, "It's not reacting."

"Bullshit, I'm just not trying very hard," Sam replied.

"No seriously, look," Kelly insisted.

Dropping his eyes, Sam saw that she was right. The knife was causing no reaction at all. Bemused, he paused.

"But..." he peered at Polly. "You're a shapeshifter..."

"No, she's not," sighed Kelly, striding forward to grasp Miss Polly's hand. Polly let out another small shriek, but Kelly just hung on, and pressed her silver bracelet against the older woman's arm.

Nothing.

"But..." Sam backed off, not believing what he was seeing. "But..."

Kelly helped a white-faced Miss Polly to sit down at her desk. "I'm so terribly sorry, Miss Polly," she began in a sincere tone, "There has been a terrible mistake."

"You... he..." stammered Miss Polly, looking at Sam with frightened eyes.

"But the retinal flare!" Sam burst out, "We saw it! In the images! In the stills, in the footage – her eyes glowed." He pulled out his cell, and flicked it to video mode. "It's happening right now!" he protested, taking a few seconds of footage, then turning it to show Kelly – it clearly depicted the Hunter with a normal appearance, but the instructor with glowing irises. "She's got a shapeshifter's eyes!"

"You... you were going to stab me, because of my eyes?" managed Miss Polly.

"Oh, fuck," Kelly muttered under her breath before turning back to the older woman, "Miss Polly, this is going to be really difficult to explain..."

"I'm 'firin' my lasers'," said Miss Polly faintly, looking at the cell screen.

"Excuse me?" said Sam, bewildered.

"It's what my grand-children call it," she told them, "Whenever they see a photo of me, they say, 'Look, grandma is firin' her lasers!'. It's a never-ending source of amusement for them."

"But... how?" Sam eventually asked.

"I have keratoconus," Miss Polly told them, taking a shaky breath.

"Kerato-what?" asked Kelly.

"Keratoconus," Sam repeated woodenly. "It's a malformation of the cornea, the clear part at the front of the eye."

"Yes, that's the very thing," Miss Polly managed a shaky smile. "I wear corrective contact lenses for it." By way of demonstration, she squinted one eye, and popped a small, barely visible disc out onto her fingertip. "It can cause blurred vision and sensitivity to light – to cut that down, my contacts have a mild metal tint to them. It's the very latest in managing the condition. You'd never know, because my eyes are quite dark, until you see me on film, and the light is just right. 'Firin' my lasers'." She replaced the contact, and blinked it into place. "Mr Page," she went on in a firmer voice, "I must ask you what this is about. It is illegal to threaten people with weapons, Mr Page! My first impulse is to summon the police!"

"Miss Polly," Kelly cut in matter-of-factly, "Sam's brother Dean has disappeared, and we have very good intelligence that he's been... abducted by somebody with eyes that show retinal flaring on camera. Unfortunately, when we saw the footage that we took during treat ball training, we saw your eyes, and thought it was you. We are very, very sorry."

"But..." Sam's face was a picture of bewilderment, "If it's not Miss Polly, who the hell_ is_ it?"

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Dean hadn't made any progress at all in getting out his bonds when Miss Polly returned.

"All sorted out," she told him brightly.

"I doubt that," sneered Dean, putting as much smirk onto his face and into his voice as he could muster.

"Oh, but yes," grinned Miss Polly. "As far as your brother is concerned, you are on your way to the Near East, to take up your newly discovered passion!"

"Oh, no," groaned Dean, "Don't tell me you've got me heading off to Lebanon to study in the kitchen of the world's greatest maker of pistachio pastries? I'd look like a total dick in one of those chef's hats."

"I can assure you that there was no mention at all of pastry preparation," Miss Polly actually grinned as she informed Dean about the cover story she'd used.

"_What?"_ he struggled furiously against the rope, "A belly dancer? Are you insane?"

"It was the best I could do at short notice," she sighed with an impish grin, "And I was in something of a hurry."

"Seriously, why have you been making up such freaky cover stories for your victims?" Dean asked in genuine curiosity.

"Because if it's one thing that I have observed about people," Miss Polly sniffed disdainfully, "It's that the more bizarre something sounds, the more likely they are to believe it. Leave a note saying that you want to move to a different state to go back to study, or you want to move to the East Coast for a better job, and people start asking questions. Make it so weird that it's completely infeasible, and they accept it as true, because nobody would make it up!"

Dean considered her answer for a moment. "You know, you may be onto something," he conceded. "Demons, and shapeshifters, yeah, them I get, but people are just plain crazy... but that's not the point!" he yapped irritably. "I am totally not the type to go belly dancing! Watch women do it, okay, but the Living Sex God does not waggle around, shaking his thang with other men!"

"I think you'd look good in the pants," she smiled beatifically. And a little silk vest. And you do have the eyelashes for it."

"I am going to kill you," growled Dean, "I am going to kill you, and after you're dead, I'm going to jump up and down on the pieces, and then I'm going to piss on your carcass, and then I'm going to drive it to a sewage treatment plant and throw it in so that thousands of other people can piss on you too..."

"Are you sure you don't want to go belly dancing?" teased Polly, "You do have quite a... vivid imagination."

"Bite me," grumped Dean.

"Oh, I won't," she told him, "A number of others might, but I won't."

There was a brief interlude of silence.

"Well, go on," prompted Dean.

"Go on, what?" asked Polly.

"Go on, with your evil plan," Dean went on.

"What evil plan?" asked Polly.

"You know," Dean nodded, "Your evil plan. This is the part where the monster tells its victim all about its evil plan. Then you can go 'bwahahahaha!' if you like," he offered, his tone suggesting that he was giving the shapeshifter quite a bit of leeway.

"Monster?" she looked dumbstruck. "Evil plan?" Her face became angry. "There isn't any evil plan!" she hissed, "I'm just getting rid of people who aren't fit to have dogs!"

"That sounds like a pretty evil plan to me," Dean said.

"Well, it's not!" she snapped. "I'm rescuing their dogs, AND providing a valuable service to others!"

"Valuable service?" Dean sounded disbelieving. "You call this a valuable service? It might be if you were a hot chick, and you were plying your trade in an exclusive brothel that caters for that sort of thing, but for a start, at the very least, you gotta get yourself a prettier shape. Seriously, if I'm going to be B&D-ed to death, I want it to be at the hands of someone who looks less like Maggie Smith, and more like Charlize Theron." He looked back at the concrete pillar behind him. "And an upholstered headboard. And some more... appealing rope. Something softer. Silk is nice. Slinky. There was this girl in Nevada, called herself Mistress Amanda, and in her back room, she had this set-up with..."

"Shut up!" Miss Polly ordered, "There will be no B&Ding! I'll just kill you, and put you through an industrial mincer in the next room, then take you to a local animal shelter after hours, and feed you to the unfortunate animals waiting to be adopted."

Dean watched her expectantly.

"What?" she snapped irritably.

"You go 'bwahahahahaha!' now," Dean said encouragingly.

"No I don't!" Miss Polly told him in a shrill voice, "If you do not shut up, I will gag you with your own socks!"

"Dean's eyes bugged with horror. "Oh, that's just gross! I just knew you were evil. Mistress Amanda used..."

"I mean it!" she insisted. "I have to get back to the Canine Academy, but I will return later to turn you into dog food." She eyed him speculatively. "You look like there's quite a bit of lean meat on you."

"You'll never convince Sam that you're me," Dean smiled smugly, "He'll be onto you straight away."

"Oh, I wouldn't try," purred Miss Polly. "I'm not stupid; you know each other too well. Anyway, all I have to do is convince him that I'm just..."

There was a strange, tearing noise, a contorting of physique, and a shedding of skin...

Dean's jaw dropped.

"What the _FUCK_?"

* * *

Goooooo Randolph!

Reviews are the Unexpected Leftover Slices Of Pizza And Pie In The Refrigerator Of Life!


	16. Chapter Fifteen

_**CORRECTION NOTICE:**_ A geographic stuff-up on my part: thanks to the lovely Laminaria Lutra for pointing out entirely correctly that if Dean wanted to study authentic raqs baladi, he would of course have to go to Egypt. I blame the fact that I'd had a very nice dinner of Turkish take-away, and clearly had it on the brain.

Meanwhile, Randolph is on a roll! Dean's not doing a belly dance - he must be doing a bunny dance! Gooooooooooooo Randolph!

* * *

**Chapter Fifteen**

"Where the hell is he?" muttered Sam anxiously, pacing up and down the room. "God, he could be anywhere! Where do I even start?"

"Wait a minute," Kelly broke into his desperate monologue and turning back to Miss Polly, looking thoughtful. "When he asked you 'Where is he?' you said 'I don't know'. You didn't say 'Who?', you said 'I don't know'. And you sounded worried, like you already knew. How did you know that Dean was missing?"

"I didn't know that Dean _was_ missing," Miss Polly had rapidly recomposed herself – it took a bit more than an angry knife-wielding apparently-homicidal giant to really rattle a woman who had presided over the basic obedience instruction of as many Beagles, Basenjis, West Highland Terriers and Chihuahuas as she had. "He can't have gone far; he caught me in the carpark just as I was leaving for my appointment, to tell me that he would be travelling overseas, and he asked me to help find Lemmy a good home if you didn't keep him."

Sam swore quietly under his breath.

"When you burst in here, waving a knife at me, Mr Page," she gave him the sort of glower that had once made a veteran police dog hide behind his handler, "I was on the phone to a local dog shelter, making a report of a missing dog."

"Whose dog has gone missing?" asked Sam.

"Mine!" wailed Miss Polly. "Max has just disappeared!"

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

"_Max?" _Dean's jaw actually dropped.

The dog gave him a happy bark, and a wink.

"You're... you're... what the hell are you?" he demanded. "Some sort of cross between a shapeshifter, and, what, a skinwalker?"

Max whuffed happily, and nodded.

"So, are you a shapeshifter who found a skinwalker to impersonate?"

Max shook his head.

"Okay, how about a shapeshifter who got bit by a skinwalker?"

Max yipped, and nodded.

"Oh, just peachy," grumbled Dean, "Another damned Jefferson Starship, a cross between Lassie and Mystique, and you're not even a hot chick."

Max curled his lip, then turned to trot out of the darkened room.

"Just so you know, I am going to give you such a swatting with a rolled-up newspaper!" Dean called after him.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

"Look, I'm sorry that Max has gone missing, but I gotta worry about my brother right now," Sam told Miss Polly apologetically, "We have good reason to believe that he's been abducted by a... person who intends to do him harm."

"Whatever for?" asked Miss Polly, as her face morphed from mystified to disapproving. "He's not involved in... _drugs_, is he?" she frowned.

"No, no, nothing like that," Sam assured her hastily, "He's probably been, uh, targeted by, um, a, er..."

"A rival dance troupe," intoned Kelly ominously.

"A dance troupe?" Miss Polly echoed doubtfully.

"Oh, yeah," Sam nodded vigorously, "Dean a talented practitioner of traditional male belly dance, yeah, and he, uh, he's one of the star performers for this group, called, er, they call themselves... Tut's Nuts."

"Because they're all totally nuts for this style of traditional Egyptian dance," added Kelly helpfully. "And their audiences just go nuts for them when they perform."

"Yeah, totally," Sam confirmed, "Anyway, you'd be amazed at the sort of rivalry that can exist between these groups. They kind of have to compete for market share, you know, for audiences, and, well, it can get really, really nasty. There's this other troupe, the, er, Raqs On Raqs Off troupe, and they are like the arch rivals of Tut's Nuts."

"Think Hatfields and McCoys," confirmed Kelly. "Think Jets and Sharks. The Doctor and The Master. Republicans and Democrats. Coke and Pepsi. iPhone and Android."

"Yeah," Sam nodded, "And, and, they've tried to, uh, sabotage Tut's Nuts before..."

"Think Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan," said Kelly grimly, "With coin belts, testosterone, and tiny little sharp finger cymbals."

"Yeah, so, we think that one of them might be trying to, uh, put Dean out of action," finished Sam. "So, I have to find him." His features fell into his Sad Puppy-Dog Face. "It'll break his heart and mine if he can never perform again..."

It had, however, been a number of decades since puppy-dog eyes had worked on Miss Polly. "But you said this person had eyes that glowed like mine," she recalled.

"A lot of them wear tinted contacts," Sam replied. "It's an artistic thing."

"You called me a shapeshifter!" Miss Polly went on, "What on earth were you talking about?"

"No I didn't!" yelped Sam, "I said, uh, I said 'You're a fake, sister!'. I thought you were in collusion with the, er, Raqs On Raqs Off guys!"

"Just because of my corrective contacts?" pressed Miss Polly.

"Well, I didn't know you wore them for an eye condition!" Sam protested.

Miss Polly gave him a look that he imagined she must have used before, perhaps when gazing in disbelief at a dog that insists of growling at its own hind leg while trying to scratch an ear, but subsided.

"This person wouldn't have taken Max, would they?" Polly asked with concern. "It's just so unlike him to wander. He's such a good boy."

"I don't see why they would," Sam shrugged, "He would have no reason to be protective of Dean, so I can't see why he would get in the way..." he looked down, straight into Lemmy's big brown worried eyes. "Don't you worry, fella," he reassured the pup, "We'll find him."

"What if they thought he was Dean's dog?" Miss Polly argued. "Dean didn't have Lemmy with him when he spoke with me. If Max was out then, they might've grabbed him too..."

"It's highly unlikely, Miss Polly," began Kelly, "He's a smart boy – Max, I mean, not Dean – and he'll probably come home by himself. Are there any other premises associated with the Perfect Pooches Canine Academy? Do you have a storage lock-up somewhere in town? Have you been looking to expand?"

Polly shook her head. "No, we have all the space we need here," she replied.

"The last place we know the culprit was, is our room," reasoned Sam, "Whoever it is left the car there. That's where we'll start."

"Keep an eye out for Max!" Miss Polly implored.

"We will," Kelly promised as they headed out to their vehicles.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Back at the Winchesters' room, Sam was still at a loss as to how to proceed.

"You can't track his phone?" asked Kelly.

"Already tried," answered Sam glumly, as the pups sniffed anxiously around the room, "It's turned off, or run out of juice."

Kelly looked thoughtful. "The shifter must've left here on foot, if it left Dean's car here," she began. "We've got that piece of skin from the shifter - we could wrap it in a shirt or something, then take it back to the Canine Academy, and see if we could get one of the people who does tracking competitively could give us a hand. We can spin them some story – actually, I kinda like the one about Tut's Nuts. I'd pay money to see your brother wiggling around in a coin belt..."

"If my brother was wiggling around in a coin belt, I'd pay money to have my eyes poked out with a spork," Sam muttered distractedly. "No, that's not an option; we can't risk civilians getting involved with whatever happens when we find this thing."

"Well, we can't expect our pups to do it," she pointed out, "They've only had their first lesson today! No ordinary pup could possibly track after only one try at it. A real tracking-oriented breed, like a Bloodhound maybe, one that has been bred to get the scent and then think of nothing else once it's got fixated on that idea, might make a pretty good try, but only a breed with very strong instincts and drive to find its target, wherever it is..."

As she spoke, Sam stopped his agitated fidgeting, and slowly smiled.

"I have an idea."

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Kelly sat behind the wheel of her truck, engine idling, and turned to Morgan, who sat in shotgun. "I don't think of myself as being particularly slow on the uptake," she said to her pup, "But I got nothing – have you got any idea what he's doing?"

Morgan did the head-tilting look-of-confusion thing as only a German Shepherd can.

"Maybe we should just assume that the oxygen is so thin up there, it's starting to affect his brain. Disorientation and irrationality are symptoms of hypoxia."

Morgan tilted her head the other way.

"Well, it was a theory," Kelly shrugged, rolling down the window and leaning out. "Are we ready to, uh, do whatever we're going to do yet?"

"Just about," Sam replied. He was kneeling next to Lemmy, fiddling with the pup's collar, whilst Lars unhelpfully nosed at it to see what was happening. "I'm just putting him onto a piece of rope that's longer than his lead, so he can pull out."

"And we're doing this because...?" she prompted.

"Because I think Lemmy has the breeding and the talent to find Dean," Sam answered, not looking up, "We just gotta let him do it his own way."

"Okaaaaay," she said, "And what way is that?"

"If this works, I'll have to go with him, wherever he goes," Sam told her, "Follow me if you can, track my phone if you have to."

"But... where the hell do you expect him to go?" she asked as Sam stood up

"I expect him to take me to Dean," Sam stated firmly.

"How?" she demanded.

"Because once he gets an idea into his fluffy, boofy little head, it's very difficult to dislodge," grinned Sam.

He stopped grinning and pulled a face of disgust with a mutter of "Oh gross," as he pulled an item from his pocket and offered it to Lemmy, who sniffed intently at it.

"What's this, Lem?" he said in a bright chirpy voice, waggling the item for the pup. "What's this? What's this?"

Responding to Sam's tone, Lemmy began to bounce on the spot, and snap at the offering.

"You got it? You got it?" asked Sam. "Okay, Lemmy! Good boy!"

Lemmy woofed with excitement, eyes dancing.

"Now... seek seek seek seek SOCK!"

* * *

Oh, it's so satisfying when a shy plot bunny finds its self-confidence, and stands up for itself...

Go and Google-images 'German Shepherd head tilt', and tell me you didn't go 'Awwwwww'.

Reviews are the Adorable Pups Gambolling In The Suns`hine Of Life!

...

What?

Oh, all right. For the more depraved of the Denizens:

Reviews are the Adorable Winchester Of Your Choice Gambolling In The Sunshine Of Life!

...

Oh, what _now?_

Le sigh. Very well.

Reviews are the Adorable Winchester Of Your Choice Gambolling In The Jacuzzi Of Life!


	17. Chapter Sixteen

**Chapter Sixteen**

All around him, there was a lingering smell of the wrong-thing that had separated him from his Alpha and brought him, snarling and biting, back to the temporary Den, taking a form that had known how to deal with a difficult dog. Lifting his nose to the encroaching night, Lemmy felt his Blood rise...

_Time, matter and distance mean very little to a Hellhound; they recognise these things only as the cumbersome, linear constraints that cripple the prey they pursue. If it was sentient, a Hellhound would be unable to explain just how effortless it is to locate prey – it would not understand the question, because 'locate' would imply that there was first a time when it did not know where its prey was, and then some sort of searching required. A Damned soul calls to a Hellhound's deepest instincts, glares like a pulsing, purulent focus of corruption against the background of fragile, linear, wonderful humanity in all its swirling, sparkling, glorious hues. _

_Imagine, then, what the soul of the Righteous Man would look like to a Hellhound._

And to the dog that loved him.

And not only loved to chew on his socks, but had, as he understood it, been commanded to go find his Alpha's socks and chew them...

With a determined yip, Lemmy set off down the road, his brother and his Alpha's brother following closely behind, with Kelly in her truck trailing them.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Having spent an hour systematically covering the neighbourhood, calling Max and dropping hastily produced flyers, Miss Polly had been trying to distract herself from her worry over Max by tidying up some of the paperwork that inevitably accumulates in any office, and just as inevitably seems to undergo some sort of synergistic proliferation so that the actual amount of paper that needs to be dealt with is greater than the sum of all the individual pieces of paper, and the actual amount of time needed to deal with the lot increases exponentially with the time it's left unattended.

The assault on Mount Administrivia was the only reason that she noticed a glint of metal sticking out from behind one of the filing cabinets.

When she bent to examine it, she found that it was Max's collar. Unbuckled, and tucked away almost out of sight.

That was the first surprise she got that night.

While she was standing there, trying to work out how Max could've undone his collar, then getting terrible mental pictures of some belly dance Mafia heavy wrestling her poor dog into a sack and dragging him away and leaving only his collar behind as a warning, Max suddenly trotted into the office.

That was the second surprise she got that night. In fact, from the expression on his face, Max was as surprised as she was.

"Oh, Max!" she cried, falling to her knees to hug him, "Oh, where have you been? I was so very worried! Oh, you naughty boy!"

Max, for his part, dialled up the Big Brown Eyes, dropped his ears, and wagged his tail.

"And you got your collar off!" she chided him lovingly, replacing it as he attempted to kiss her nose. "You silly boy! What on Earth have you been up to?"

Max sat, and offered a paw and a small whine of affection.

"Well, you're back now," she shook her head, "Were you actually lost, or did you just find a nice warm spot to nap in the sun, and not hear me calling you? The puppy classes always do tire you out, don't they? Where do they get all that energy?"

Max yawned hugely and convincingly.

"I feel silly now," she confided, talking to her dog the way loving pet owners do, knowing that they don't understand the words, but will understand the happy tone of voice, "I've been sitting here, convincing myself that you were abducted by a gang of rampaging belly dancers! Just fancy!"

Max tilted his head adorably in a way that made her suspect he might have a bit of German Shepherd swirling around in his Heinz Special mix of 57 varieties.

"Well, my lost boy had come home," she smiled, reaching down to ruffle his ears. "I just hope that Mr Page has similar luck, looking for his brother. I wonder if I should approach Mr Kinsman who instructs in tracking, and ask him to put Macushla on the job for Mr Page, she's very good over urban terrain... Max!"

With a sudden yelp, Max turned, and sprinted from the office.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Lemmy's progess was in fits and starts: he sniffed, he paused, he sat down to scratch, he turned around in circles, he doubled back, he had false starts in some directions. But he kept moving, a look of determination on his little face, as his brother followed with Sam, giving the odd whuff of encouragement.

""Where's he going?" called Kelly out the window, as Lemmy suddenly doubled back, and veered off the street into a park, where the blacktop ran out in a parking lot.

"I'm hoping he's pointing due Dean," Sam called back, "Just follow when you can!"

With an anxious woof from Morgan and some choice cusswords from Kelly, the truck reversed back out onto the road, and Kelly started looking for a street that would take her in the last known general direction of Sam and the Winchester pups.

Cutting across the park – pausing to bark at some ducks who were just sitting on a pond and minding their own business – Lemmy continued with his somewhat meandering route, but Sam was pretty sure he was honing in on a more specific vector.

It was well and truly dusk when the pup took his last detour on the edge of town and headed for a warehousing estate.

"Why is it always a cruddy, industrial site?" Sam muttered to himself as Lemmy sniffed carefully along one rust-flecked wall after another. Eventually, he found one where he stopped, sniffed, and growled as a broken panel. He turned his face up to Sam, and his eyes were flickering with crackles of dark red fire.

"In here, huh?" Sam found the door to the place, and eased it open as quietly as he could, stepping into the dingy echoing space. "We're gonna have to do this quietly," he told the pups, "We don't know whether Dean's here, and we don't know where the shapeshifter is, or who it looks like."

He was a few minutes into a search grid when he heard the door open behind them, and footsteps on the darkness. Frantically, he looked around for a hiding place, but it was an open plan area, with no cover.

Crouching down and pulling both the pups in close to him, he hissed desperately to Lars.

"Stealth, Lars! Stealth! Stealth! Oh, I hope I'm not too big for you to pull this off..."

With a small uncertain whine, Lars did... whatever it was he did...

Sam wasn't sure exactly what he was expecting to see: a dulled, sepia-toned wash over the view around him, or a swirling, smudged aspect as depicted in 'Lord of the Rings' when Frodo put on the ring (and was terrified to be spotted by what Dean kept referring to as 'The Giant Flaming Vagina Of Sauron', much to Sam's annoyance). There didn't seem to be anything different, which meant he had no idea as to whether Lars was actually able to pull him into the bubble of apparent invisibility the pup could create.

Until he watched himself stride past without noticing him. That was a bit of a hint.

Lemmy let out a small, low growl; Sam winced, and grabbed the puppy's muzzle. Shapeshifter-Sam paused, and looked around suspiciously, before resuming his trek into the gloom.

When the shifter was a safe distance ahead, Sam let out the breath he'd been holding. Pulling the pups' leads in short, he stood, and carefully followed. The door he'd seen himself heading for was slightly ajar.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Dean knew immediately that it wasn't Sam. He hadn't seen his baby brother smirk that unpleasantly since he'd been soulless.

"Oh, God," he sighed, "This is just totally weird, and totally freaky, and totally weird. I'm going to be B&D-ed to death by something that looks like my own brother."

Shapeshifter-Sam produced a remarkably authentic Bitchface. "Will you stop going on about B&D?" he demanded. "You're the one who's fixated on it! I saw it when I was pretending to be you, to write a note, and then to see Polly. Your imagination is even more flexible than some of the women you've bedded. Seriously, I wanted to take a bath after I'd been you. And for a guy who spends most of his life as a dog, that's saying something!"

"Why _do_ you spend your life as a dog?" asked Dean. "When you could look like practically anybody?"

"Because it's a great life!" Shifter-Sam replied. "After the skinwalker bit me and I found I could do dog-shaped, I was chased by a couple of Hunters one time. I ran into a dog shelter, let myself into a pen, and hid. I was only going to stay until the following night, but later that day, Polly came along, and adopted me. And I had bed, board, food, toys, a fun job, an all the unconditional love I could soak up! It's all so, so... simple! And I've never, ever been chased by a Hunter again! Why _wouldn't_ I stay a dog?"

"Dean thought about that. "I spent some time as a Rottweiler, once," he confided, "And I get it. I really do. Simple, that's the word. Eat the food, sniff the butt, chase the squirrel, hump the leg, roll in the dead skunk – it's no wonder dogs are happy all the time." He looked the shifter up and down. "So, any chance of you doing Mistress Amanda?" he asked hopefully.

"No," snapped Shifter-Sam, "Because I've never met her."

"Speaking of Mistress Amanda," Dean went on.

"_We_ were NOT speaking of Mistress Amanda!" interrupted the shapeshifter. "YOU are speaking of Mistress Amanda!"

"It's a shame I'll never get to speak to Sam again," Dean grinned, "Would you do me a favour and tell him I said he rocks a leather collar?"

"And you have the gall to call me weird," muttered the shapeshifter, raising a hand to the dog collar it still wore. "Usually I take this off and leave it behind if I have to leave my four-legged form."

"On you, it looks good," smirked Dean. "I bet Kelly would like it, next time they're doing the horizonal hula, she's a dog person – what fun they could have with a bit of role playing, Sit! Lie down! Roll over! Beg! Good boy..."

Shut! Up!" yapped the shapeshifter. His face became momentarily confused. "Your brother hasn't had sex with Kelly," he relayed.

"What?" Dean's face became a mask of disappointment. "Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yes I'm sure!" snapped the shapeshifter in exasperation.

"He could've," Dean suggested, "And be repressing the memory, because he's like that..."

"He's not repressing anything!" insisted the shapeshifter. "You're the one who's got so much repression going inside, you could be your own small working model of North Korea! For instance, since it's such a recent memory, I happen to know that you actually spent some time on YouTube, looking at clips of..."

"Not even a little bit?" Dean wasn't listening; he sounded sad. "They must've smooched. Has he made it to second base, at least?"

"SHUT UP!" the shapeshifter let out an aggravated little shriek. "I didn't take this form just to satisfy your utterly inappropriate curiosity about your brother's private life! I prefer a reasonably large male self for this. You'd be amazed at how much force it can actually take to butcher a human carcass. It's the connective tissue. Tendons and ligaments, they're intended to hold bones together, and they do it quite well."

"Oh, no," groaned Dean, "The whole beaten-to-death-by-your-evil-brother thing? Been there, done that. My brother was possessed by the Devil himself, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt..."

"Will – you – shut – UP!?" screeched the shapeshifter, "The first thing I do, before I go start up the mincer, is debark you!"

It reached for a knife.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

Sam watched the exchange between his brother and his shapeshifter-self, mind racing to formulate a plan. There was no way he could cover the distance to Dean before the shifter saw him.

With apiece of rope, he secured his smallest knife to Lars in a makeshift harness. "I need you to get this to Dean, but be sneaky about it," he whispered to his pup. "I know you can do this, Lars. Stealth! Stealth, fella! Stealth! Stealth!"

Lars, and the knife, obligingly disappeared.

"Good boy!" praised Sam, stroking the furry invisible head that butted at his hand for pats, "Now, go to Dean! Go to Dean! Dean! Dean! Do Stealth! Go to Dean!"

He felt the small presence move away from him.

At that moment, the shifter pulled a knife and threatened to debark Dean.

It was too much for Lemmy.

With a blood-curdling snarl, he pulled out of Sam's grasp, and bolted straight for the shapeshifter, barking savagely, eyes glowing furnace red.

* * *

Dean spent a few days as a Rottie show dog in 'Best Of Breed', and thoroughly enjoyed the delights of a simple dog's life, and also spent a few days thinking he was a dog in 'Sonofabitch', where he also enjoyed the simple things (but not being forced into the bath).

Please feed Randolph the Plot Bunny some reviews - he just found the courage to kick his big brother Nathaniel in the shin!

Reviews are the Helpful Part-Hellhound Pups Coming To Your Aid When You Find Yourself Tied To The Concrete Pillar Of Life!


	18. Chapter Seventeen

While a weekend of interwebs shenanigans left me incommunicado for a few days, Randolph the plot bunny kicked his brother Nathaniel to the kerb, and dictated nearly two more chapters! If you feed him reviews, he might just finish of the one after this one... *hint hint extremely unsubtle hint*

* * *

**Chapter Seventeen**

Dean didn't give away so much as an eyebrow twitch when he felt the small, furry presence behind him nosing at his hand, and the shape of a knife handle bumped against his fingers. But he couldn't keep the worry off his face when he saw his pup, eyes glowing, bearing down on shapeshifter-Sam like a small, adorably angry fluffy cushion with teeth.

"Lemmy! No!" he yelled, as Lemmy barrelled into the shifter's leg, making the monster stagger.

"Ow!" yapped shifter-Sam, "You little asshole! I'm doing this for your benefit, you ungrateful mutt!"

Lemmy didn't seem convinced; he took a savage bite at the shifter's leg, drawing blood.

"OW!" shrieked the monster, swiping at Lemmy with the knife.

The pup sank his teeth into the shifter's hand, but simple physics meant that a human body with Sam Winchester's build could easily pick up a puppy the size of Lemmy. It did exactly that. Lemmy hung on, but was snapped back and forth like a rabbit in a terrier's jaws as the shifter tried to shake him off.

"NO!" screamed Dean, "You'll hurt him! Stop! You'll..." he paused.

If you don't have physics on your side, it's time to fuck with physics.

"Up, Lem!" he called cheerfully, "Up! Up! Up, Lemmy, Up!"

Lemmy let out a muffled yelp as he was shaken again – but his ears began to flap.

"Good boy, Lem!" called Dean as his hand closed around the knife behind him, "Up! Up! Up! Hold him! Up! Up!"

Growling determinedly, Lemmy started to rise, the shapeshifter's astonished gaze following him.

"Stop that!" it snapped, trying to yank its arm away. Lemmy just dug in harder, and the hum of his ears changed to a higher note as they flapped faster.

The shapeshifter staggered again as something it couldn't see collided with its leg, and began to savage its shin with the unmistakeable sting of teeny tiny determined little puppy teeth. Lars reappeared, going for bone.

With a pained howl, the shapeshifter changed, trying to shake off the attackers. In quick succession, it assumed the shapes of Dean, Miss Polly, Kelly, then finally settled on Max, since a dog-shaped body is much more effective for fighting other dogs than a human-shaped one is.

"Dean!" called Sam anxiously, brandishing his gun as Dean finished sawing through the ropes that held him and sprang at the canine brawl in front of him.

"I'm okay!" Dean told him, not taking his eyes of the dog fight, "You loaded with silver?"

"I can't get a clear shot!" Sam fruitlessly tried to draw a bead on Max, "Lars! Lemmy! Get clear!"

It didn't work. It's rare for dogs to really fight like they mean it; any confrontation is usually about threat display, bluff, and maybe a bit of a scuffle to settle any perceived perturbation in the pack order, whether it's at home, or at the park meeting a new potential playmate. Any dog owner who has seen their animal in a serious actual fight will know that, no matter how well-mannered and well-trained the animal is, once it's on, and they're in The Zone, all bets are off, and the word 'obedience' is something that happens to other people...

"MAX!"

However, the element of total, overwhelming surprise can carry a lot of clout.

Humans, dogs and unnatural abomination stopped what they were doing, and their heads snapped around.

Miss Polly stood in the middle of the floor, an expression of utter disbelief and horror on her face.

"What are you?" she demanded in a quavering voice, "What are you?"

The shifter was the first to break away, shifting back to Sam-shaped as it grabbed up its knife, grabbing Miss Polly in a headlock, and putting the knife to her throat.

"Stay back!" it demanded, as Miss Polly screamed, "Stay back, or I'll cut her throat!"

"After everything she did for you?" Dean spat angrily. "You're the ungrateful asshole!"

"Miss Polly," said Sam anxiously, "What are you even doing here?"

"His collar," she replied in a trembling voice, "There's a GPS tracker on his collar. In his name tag. I had a dog run away, once, scared by fireworks – it took days to find her. I've had trackers on my dogs ever since they became small and widely available..."

"I knew I should've ditched the damned collar," muttered shifter-Sam. "I'm really sorry, Polly, But their name is actually Winchester, and they're Hunters. They're here to kill me. I won't let them do that."

"Max," she sobbed.

"We're just going to back up, then I'll let her go," the shifter stated, starting to move back towards the door. The growling pups stalked after them, eyes glowing and hackles up, but keeping their distance. "You won't catch me, guys," shifter-Sam grinned, "Max could outrun you, and I can also do greyhou-URK!"

The shifter suddenly stiffened, eyes widened in surprise.

Kelly darted around from behind it and pulled Miss Polly away, as the shifter clawed helplessly at the knife buried to the hilt in its back.

"KILL IT!' she roared.

Sam didn't need to be told twice; he put a double-tap into the centre of mass, then two into its head.

His doppelganger collapsed to the floor, dead.

Lemmy turned around, and, determined to follow the direction of a senior Pack member at last, attacked Dean's socks with gusto.

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

"He was always such a good boy," Miss Polly sniffled, as Kelly pushed a second cup of sweet tea into her hands. "So, he was always one of those shape-changing monsters, then?"

"I'm afraid so," Dean confirmed sympathetically, pushing Lemmy's questing nose away from his feet once more (he really did get ideas lodged in his fuzzy little head real good). They'd taken Miss Polly home, and she had wanted some answers. "Hiding in plain sight. But he was so happy with you that, after you adopted him from the shelter, he just never wanted to move on."

"He was so intelligent," Miss Polly honked musically into a lace-edged hanky, "And so good with other dogs, and with the puppies. Except for Lemmy."

"That's because Lemmy is, uh, a Hunting dog," Sam told her, "It wasn't food aggression over a treat ball – Max, the shapeshifter, tripped his bad-guy-detection instincts."

"It's such a shame he can't have a showing career," she sighed, looking fondly to the doggy cuddle heap where Lars, Morgan and Giselle the Poodle awaiting a new home were lounging together companionably, then to Lemmy (who still determinedly nosed after Dean's socks), "And that his brother won't be able to trial in Obedience. But what you do, and what they will grow up to do, is more important." She gave Dean a wobbly smile. "Lemmy may just be a late bloomer – Rotties are one of those breeds where the body matures much earlier than the brain – and I think he will grow up to be a good boy."

"If he grows up to be half the Hunter his dad was, he will," Dean smiled. "He was awesome."

"He sounds like he was a wonderful animal," Polly found a wobbly little smile of her own.

Dean reached for his cell. "I've got some pictures of him," he offered, "And of his dad, Jimi Senior, too – we did show him, once, and he won his Open Dog class..."

Kelly headed back to the kitchen with the mugs they'd used. "I think I need another sweet tea," she decided, pulling out a hipflask, "With some medicine."

"I hear that," muttered Sam. "It's kind of sad, really – I mean, she thought Max was her dog, and it turns out, he was a murderous monster. That's gotta be hard. Basically, she's lost a beloved pet and companion."

"I think a new companion might be closer than she thinks," suggested Kelly, nodding out the door. They could see Dean showing Polly his phone; as she smiled and cooed at the photos of Jimi Junior and Jimi Senior, Giselle the Poodle extracted herself from the puppy pile and made her way to Polly's side, to offer a consoling presence, and maybe solicit some pats. "Poodles are a very intelligent breed. I wonder if Giselle was just bored with the showing class? I bet she'd do really well with Obedience."

"She's certainly got a lovely nature," Sam agreed.

"Your little guys have more of what I'd call an 'interesting' nature," Kelly went on without missing a beat. "Seriously, invisible dog? Hovering dog?"

Sam looked at her nonplussed. "Um," he said. "So, you, er, saw that bit?"

"Bit difficult to miss," she snorted with amusement, "So, what gives? Come on, spill, Winchester."

"If I tell you, you won't believe me," he challenged her.

"I'll decide that," she replied loftily.

He made a decision. "Okay," he began, "Lars and Lemmy are three-quarters Hellhound."

"Hellhound?" Kelly cocked an eyebrow.

"Hellhound," confirmed Sam. "Their dad, Jimi Junior, mated with a Hellhound when he was really still a pup himself. Seven years or so later, their mom answered a summoning on a case we were working, and whelped."

"And Jimi Senior?" she pressed.

"Oh, he was a full-blood Hellhound too," Sam went on, "Dean accidentally summoned him while pranking a Hunter who kept trying to kill me. He mated with Bobby's dog, Rumsfeld, and Jimi Junior was one of the puppies."

She gave him a long look. "You're serious," she said finally.

"As serious as Hellhound genetics," he grinned.

"What happened to the other puppies?"

"Well, there's been one from each litter that's wanted to stay with Bobby," Sam explained, "Janis, Jimi Junior's sister, and Rumsfeld, Lars and Lemmy's brother. Joni, and then Lita, chose the Hunter who had Mako."

Kelly blinked. "You mean... he's still alive?"

"She," grinned Sam, "And yeah, she is still very much alive. With a three-week-old baby, no less. In fact, that reminds me, I got something to show you."

He pulled out his own cell. "The resolution is better on the laptop – I'll send it to you, if you like." He handed over the phone.

It was a photo of a young woman with a scarred face, and a...dog.

Well, it had a lead and a collar, so she assumed it was a dog. It was nominally shaped like a black German Shepherd with a few sable highlights, but, given the scale provided by the pick-up right behind it, the animal – he – was huge. And there were other things that were... not completely right. The forequarters were so heavy that the back looked almost roached. The front legs were heavily muscled. The neck was thick, the head large, and the teeth..."

"Jesus H. Christ," she breathed; the dog was straining at the lead, clearly wanting to attack the photographer, showing a snarl of teeth that would've been right at home in the mouth of a Kodiak bear. "Look at that frigging dentition! Those canines must be at least two inches long!" She stared at the picture. "Is that a woman? She's not a midget, is she, he's really that big. How the hell is she holding that thing with one arm?"

"Ronnie's about five-eight," Sam grinned," Sam grinned, "She says he was a very special dog. He's been dead twenty years, and she still thinks of him every day. She still has his collar – she brings it out sometimes when people don't believe how big his neck was."

She stared at the picture, and understanding dawned. "Is this... is this Mako?"

"The very same," he confirmed. "That monster right there is Morgan's daddy."

"Okay," Kelly said eventually. "Okay. I am now officially convinced; Wildhunt dogs have Hellhound blood. If the bloodline could produce that... well, it's either Hellhound blood, or there's been some cross-breeding with wild boar, sharks and bears at some point."

"Mako tangled with a brown bear once," Sam related, "And walked away afterwards."

"You're kidding," she said flatly.

"Apparently not," he shrugged.

"Fuck me," she muttered, "So, what happened?"

"Well, apparently, once the bear realised that her choices were getting mauled or getting raped, she just put her head down and let him have his wicked way," he told her.

"You're making that up!" she snapped.

"Nope," Sam smiled even more widely, "You can go ask Ronnie about him yourself, if you like. I asked her, and she said it'd be okay for you to drop in. She's not usually the friendly or talkative type," he said in a conspiratorial tone, "But you've found her weak spot: you want to hear her talk about one of her dogs. You may find that once she starts, you can't get her to shut up."

"I might do that," she smiled, swigging from her mug of tea. "Bleh, I need something stronger. Job's done, I vote for a celebratory drink at the nearest bar with cute bartenders."

"I vote for that too!" announced Dean sunnily. "Time to celebrate the awesomeness of the smartest dog in the class!"

"Well, that's very nice of you Dean," Sam replied serenely, "But Lars doesn't need anything special, just a pat on the head and maybe a liver treat."

"Bitch."

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

They crèched the puppies in Kelly's truck – Morgan was introduced to Oinker Stoinker, while Lemmy and Lars discovered the joy of Zippo the Hippo – and found a bar. Three rounds in, a blonde woman came bouncing across the bar to greet Kelly as she went to the bar to stand her round. Kelly let out a squeak of delight, and hugged her gleefully.

"Nat!" she enthused, "How you doin'?"

"Oh, I broke a nail dealing with a chupacabra," sighed the blonde melodramatically, "And chipped all the others on that hand, and I'd just had them done! Seriously, next time, I am SO getting shellac..." she broke off and glanced over to the table where Sam and Dean were talking. "Are you with them?" Nat asked with a sly smile, "Oh, Kel, I am so proud of you!"

"No, I'm not 'with them'," sighed Kelly, "We just ended up working on the same job."

"Is that what kids are calling it these days?" Nat waggled her perfectly shaped eyebrows at her occasional Hunting partner. "It wouldn't hurt you to get a bit of horizontal action occasionally, you know. It's a great cardiovascular workout. And a lot more fun than trying to run down a wendigo. You need to get some stuffin', muffin."

Kelly rolled her eyes as Nat followed her back to the table.

"Hey guys," she began, "I've just bumped into a galpal I Hunt with occasionally. This is Natalie. Nat, usually. Nat, this is Sam..."

"Hi there, Nat," Sam stood and politely shook hands.

"...And this is Dean."

When Dean didn't move, Sam kicked him under the table. "Dean!" he hissed, "Don't be so... rude..."

Dean and Natalie were frozen in place, staring at each other. Sam was pretty sure he heard the air sizzle between them.

"What the...?" he turned to Kelly, who was shaking her head in bemusement. "Wait a minute," he said to her under his breath, "Is this Natalie,_ that _Natalie, the one who calls herself..."

"Aphrodite On Earth," nodded Kelly.

"Meets the Living Sex God," mused Sam, as they two Mortal Conjugal Deities continued to stare into each other's eyes. "Fucking hell." He looked around. "These people may not be safe this close to ground zero."

"Do you think," asked Kelly, "If I dropped a beer mat between them, it would be instantly incinerated?"

"Sam," said Dean, rising and extending a hand to Natalie, who smiled brilliantly and took it, "Don't wait up." The two made their way out of the bar.

"I wonder if they'll self-annihilate," mused Sam. "Or divide by zero, or something. Tear a hole in reality, so we all cease to exist, and all of Creation is destroyed in one blinding flash of libido."

"Well, if they do, the explosion will be so big it will vapourise everything for a couple of hundred square miles," Kelly told him cheerfully, "So we'll be reduced to bemused shadows on a wall before we even know it."

"Oh, well, that's something to be grateful for, I guess," Sam shrugged. "Uh, it looks like I've lost my ride," he added sheepishly, "Could you, maybe..."

"Sure," she smiled. "Actually, my room is on the way to yours – you might want to drop in and see a couple of etchings on the walls, I think you'll find them really interesting..."

They headed back to Kelly's motel room, where the pups followed them in and immediately made themselves at home on Morgan's blanket. Sam looked around. "I don't see any etchings," he noted.

"Oh, there aren't any _actual_ etchings," Kelly informed him.

He looked confused. "Then, if there aren't any, why would you invite me back here to see etchings?"

"Oh, Sam," she smiled beautifully, then reached up to put her arms around his neck. "That's just something that kids are calling it these days..."

* * *

I promise you, Kelly absolutely will not die - Sam's Dick Of Death does not work in the Jimiverse.

'Can We Keep Him?' describes the arrival of the Winchesters' first Hunting dog, 'Balls' includes the conception of Lars and Lemmy's litter, and some of the Denizens may remember briefly seeing Mako in action in the Prologue of 'Wolf In Wolf's Clothing'.

Meanwhile, Reviews are the Adorable Part-Hellpuppy/Winchester Of Your Choice* Amusing You By Playing With The Fluffy Hippo/Fluffy Handcuffs Of Life!*

*circle that which applies**

**if anybody tries to circle Hellpuppy and Fluffy Handcuffs, I can tell you right now that 1) you need professional help of a sort that you can't get here and 2) they'll probably just chew them up, metal and all. They are three-quarters Hellhound, after all.


	19. Chapter Eighteen

Calm down, Leahelisabeth: In the Jimiverse, Sam's dick works just fine; it's the 'Every woman he has sex with dies' bit that doesn't happen. In the Jimiverse, any woman Sam has sex with lives for many years afterwards, and although they never realize it, the last meal that each of them has includes a large decadent slice of particularly good chocolate cake.

* * *

**Chapter Eighteen**

The next morning, the Winchesters were back on the road, armed with a packet of ginger snaps, which Kelly had sworn by as an effective carsickness remedy for man or beast.

"They're supposed to be for the dogs," said Sam reprovingly as Dean helped himself to another cookie.

"I need the sugar, bro," Dean grinned infuriatingly, "I'm depleted, utterly depleted, in so many ways..."

"Not interested, Dean," Sam shot a futile Bitchface #6™ (I SO Do NOT Want To Hear The Gory Details Of One Of Your Sexual Conquests, Jerk) back at his brother.

"No, seriously," Dean persisted, "Nat was unlike anybody I've ever met. Or bedded. Or tabled."

"Dean..."

"Or sofa-ed."

"Dean..."

"Or spa-bath-ed..."

"Dean!"

"Or car hooded..."

DEAN!"

"Her imagination, Sam! Her imagination! Her flexibility! Her complete and total capacity to stifle her own gag reflex..."

"_DEAN!"_

"...And hold her breath for longer than a pearl diver..."

"_**DEAN! SHUT! **__** UP**__**!"**_

"It's a night I'm sure I'll remember, and treasurer," Dean sighed happily, snagging himself another ginger cookie. "I can only hope it was as memorable for her. Hell, who am I kidding? Of course it was!"

"Yeah, it's your self-effacing modesty that people remember," offered Sam sourly.

"And you know what? Her middle name is Amanda! She really knows how to tie a knot, too..."

"Gaaaaah!" Sam let out an inarticulate yodel of outrage. "Stop it! Stop it! Just stop it right now!"

"So, why do you have such a twist in your panties this morning?" demanded Dean.

"Gee, I have no idea," trilled Sam, "Could it be that I'm trapped in the car with my disgusting excuse for a big brother regaling me with yet another of his endless store of Chicks I Have Done stories? Shucks, could that possibly be it?"

Dean's expression turned sad. "The shapeshifter told me you didn't get it on with Kelly," he related.

"That's none of your damned business!" snapped Sam with a brisk _Bitchface_ #5™ (My Private Life Is SO None Of Your Business, Jerk)

"Of course it's my business!" Dean shot back. "My baby bro keeps company with an entirely suitable woman, I want to know that he's getting some! I thought you were just being your usual shy-boy self, and not wanting to talk about it," he went on miserably, "And it turns out that the reason you didn't want to talk about it was that there was nothing to talk about!"

"Suck it up, buttercup," growled Sam.

"Please tell me the two of you finally got down and got funky last night," pleaded Dean.

"No," barked Sam, "I'm not going to talk about it."

"Please," begged Dean, "I feel like such a failure as a big brother."

"Dean, I said no!"

"For me, Sam?" Dean momentarily turned a wistful, brimming-eyed face to his baby brother.

"Fine," Sam raised his hands in defeat, "Fine, I'll talk about it. For you. Because you're my big brother."

"Thanks, Sammy," Dean gave him a brave, wobbly little smile that immediately morphed into a salacious smirk. "So, who jumped who?"

"Whom," Sam corrected automatically. "Well, since you must know, she jumped me."

Dean's eyebrows shot up. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, totally," Sam smiled as if in recollection. "She actually asked me to drop by her room to see some etchings, so we went inside, and the next thing I know, whammo!"

Dean's eyebrows did a personal best. "Whammo?"

"Dude, she practically ran at me backwards," Sam recounted animatedly, "It was like having my clothes pulled off by a horny octopus."

"Way to go Sam!" grinned Dean. "So, I hope you made the mattress squeak."

"Not for Round One," Sam corrected, "We didn't make it that far."

"Really?" Dean was fascinated.

"Nope. She just tripped me up, threw me down, and then jumped on me like I was her own personal private adults-only pogo stick. You know those big inflatable Spacer Hopper toys? I felt like one of those, except she wasn't hanging on with her _hands_..."

Dean's eyes were two saucers of astonishment.

"That's how I got the carpet rash. Well, on my back. The rash on my knees, that was later – neither of us wanted to miss the Attenborough documentary on cable, so we thought, hey, why not multitask?"

Dean blinked. "You... you did a girl doggy-style, watching TV?"

"Worked better than I'd have thought," confided Sam, "Balanced a bowl of popcorn on her back, put the remote beside it, and hey presto, all around entertainment! Turns out, she's got a thing about Sir David's voice – man, when he started talking so passionately about stick insects, I thought she was gonna tear my dick off..."

Dean's mouth fell open in disbelief.

"So, anyway," Sam went on matter-of-factly, "There was popcorn butter everywhere after that, which was kinda fun, but a bit sticky, so we headed for the shower, where she hung from the curtain rail by her toes..."

"You're making this up, aren't you," said Dean in a small voice as his face fell. "That's just cruel, Sam. You raised my hopes, now you dash them."

"Turns out she's also a keen amateur practitioner of kinbaku, Japanese rope art bondage – got her own set of cashmere ropes, nice and soft – and there's this one form she's been working on called 'The Helpless Warrior In The Net Of The Ardent Mermaid', and that's how I got the marks on my ankles..."

"I had such high hope for you this time," Dean sounded sadly disappointed. "You promised me beautiful natural acts, now you break my heart."

"... Then we thought we'd do a bit of Tarzan and Jane sort of thing, and it wasn't exactly a chandelier, but the light fitting proved to be remarkably robust, I'd have never thought that somebody my size could have swung from it..."

"Okay, that's enough," grumped Dean. "I get it. Nothing happened. I'm shattered. Again. I don't know what to say, Sam, except to wonder where I went wrong."

"You'll get over it," Sam smiled at his brother, filing away Kelly's trick of wild exaggeration as a deflection technique as he turned to give each of the pups another ginger cookie each. "The cookies seem to be working."

"Good," griped Dean, "Because after the bitter disappointment of discovering that my baby brother didn't get any last night, I don't think I could cope with even a Level Two Event."

"Well, look at it this way," reasoned Sam, "We'll never have to worry about taking them out on their first Hunt, ever again. Right, guys?" The pups looked up briefly, then went back to gnawing on their cookies. "I think Jimi Junior, and Grandpa Jimi Senior, would be proud."

"Yeah." Dean smiled a small, happier smile, quickly recovering from the devastating blow of his baby brother's apparent failure once again to have sex. "We should celebrate with wings for lunch! In fact, we shouldn't wait for lunch, we should celebrate with wings ASAP! Right guys?"

"Maybe it's not such a good idea," mused Sam, "When their carsickness seems to be just starting to back off."

"Wings are always a good idea," scoffed Dean, "Just ask their dad, and their granddad. And they earned it."

Sam turned to smile at the pups. "Yeah, I guess they did," he agreed. "So, why are we headed to Oregon?"

"For this, Sammy," grinned Dean, taking a creased flyer from his pocket and handing it over, "Miss Polly gave it to me."

Sam stared at the paper. "Are you serious?"

"Totally," confirmed Dean, "Miss Polly says it would be a wonderful opportunity for Lem to use some of what he's learned."

"Oh, God," groaned Sam, "I don't believe this..."

"Believe it," Dean said, "So, don't just sit there, Francis, do that laptop dancing you do, and get us entered!"

"Yeah, yeah," sighed Sam, reaching for the laptop, and starting it up. He peered at the flyer Dean had given him, typed in the address, and waited for the page to come up.

**OREGON**

**STATE DOG SHOW**

"All right," he said, as he located the entries page and began to search for a work-around to get into the database, "It was Winchester Iron Fist, wasn't it?"

* * *

As to what Sam and Kelly actually got up to, well, there were certainly none of the crassly vulgar activities Sam described for Dean, but he's not going to tell, because he's not That Kind Of Guy…

Randolph sees light at the end of the tunnel! And possibly a visit from the DDD&SSS van, if he gets enough reviews to power him that far - review sender = crew member! (Australian plot bunnies like to average ten reviews per chapter, but they'll eat just about anything, and I'm pathetically desperately happy just to think that someone has read something I wrote.) Tell you what, review this chapter, and I'll put up the next one in an hour or so, 'k?


	20. Chapterlet Nineteen

Wow, now that Randolph sees the finish line, just watch him go!

* * *

**Chapterlet Nineteen**

A few days later, Lemmy made his show debut, and was trotting back to the car with not one but two sashes for his efforts. Dean did his best to smile politely for Madam Judge and the audience, but as soon as they were on their way back to their motel, he couldn't contain his vexation.

"I don't understand why you're not happy," Sam snapped at him, "The judge said he was an excellent dog, and showed enormous potential."

"Yeah, she thought he was awesome," Dean growled.

"Lemmy _was_ totally awesome! He did everything right!" Sam told him. "He was the stand-out entry in his class!"

"I thought so," agreed Dean shortly.

"Dean, what the hell is wrong with you? Lemmy won! The judge said he was clearly the obvious winner for Puppy Dog in his Group!"

"Yeah, she was obviously soooooo impressed."

"Dean, he didn't just win, he got Reserve Best In Group too! That's amazing for a dog his age! It means he's outstanding!"

"Second most outstanding," griped Dean, "He was the second most outstanding dog. That's what 'Reserve' means..."

Sam glared at his brother. "Are you really that shallow?" he demanded. "Have you really gone so 'Toddlers and Tiaras' that you can't be happy, because your dog, your puppy, at his very first show, after only a couple of weeks of training, wins not only his class, but is judged Reserve in his Group? You should be proud of him!"

"I AM proud of him!" countered Dean, "He WAS awesome! He IS awesome! TOTALLY awesome! And that stupid judge couldn't see that he was CLEARLY more awesome than... _her!_"

Sam groaned. "Oh, God, is that what this is all about?"

"What the hell was Ronnie doing there?" demanded Dean.

"Well, they live here. You heard her, she just decided to enter Lita for a bit of fun, to get out of the house."

"She's supposed to be stuck at home, with a baby, wearing puke-stained pyjamas, laundering an endless supply of dirty diapers and not finding the time to shower!" Dean ranted, "Not turning up at dog shows, ruining my day, the smug cow!"

"Don't be so damned unreasonable," Sam barked back, "She couldn't have had any idea that you'd enter Lemmy."

"Oh, really?" asked Dean slyly. "If that's the case, how come she used the pedigree name we made up for Lita on the Perfect Pups classes application, huh? Tell me that, college boy."

"I told her," Sam explained, "When I called her, to tell her about Kelly and her interest in Wildhunt dogs' breeding. She laughed; said 'Ice Queen' was perfect, and she'd use it if she ever needed a cover..."

"Aha!" yipped Dean in outraged triumph, "I knew it! It's all your fault!"

"_What?" _yelped Sam. "How the hell is it my fault?"

"Consorting with the enemy, Sam," Dean rumbled as dangerously as any werewolf, "Assisting the opposition. Collaborating. You know what happens to collaborators? First, we shave their heads..."

"Jerk," snorted Sam in irritation, "She's not an enemy! She gave Lemmy a pep talk before he went into the ring..."

"She sabotaged him!" Dean hissed.

"She told him to keep his ears pricked up and wear a serious expression, because she'd noticed that the judge like that," Sam countered, "And she was right. She and Andrew were both rooting for you from the sidelines! It's just that today, the judge decided that Lita was Best In Group."

"That asshole went home with my dog's trophy!" declared Dean, utterly irate.

"You're impossible," muttered Sam, turning around to check on the pups. It had been a big day for both of them, Lemmy in his class, and Lars on moral support, and they were curled contentedly together for a nap. Lemmy raised his head, gave Sam a doggy grin, yawned, and went back to sleep. "Look at Lemmy. He's happy. He had a fun day, he won some stuff, and he's probably anticipating some celebratory fried wings tonight."

Dean's glower softened a little. "I guess we can do wings," he conceded.

"Dean," began Sam, with a roll of his eyes and a Bitchface #7™ (You Can Be Impossibly Unreasonable Dean, You Know That?), "Tell me, in your opinion, who is, right now, the most awesome dog in the world?"

"My dog. Totally," answered Dean immediately.

"Well, that is probably the one subject, ever, on which your opinion is really the only one that counts," humphed Sam, "So be happy with that, and shut the hell up." He decided to change the subject. "That woman who asked if he was a Schwartzhund pup," he went on, "He said that if we ever wanted to breed from him, she'd love to cross him to one of her young bitches who's also being trained for the Hunt, and is showing great promise. Might be worth keeping in mind. Succession planning, you know."

"Yeah, I guess," Dean subsided a bit. His face softened into a smile as he watched the sleeping pups in the back. "I've kinda gotten used to having a dog. An extra pair of eyes to watch my back." He gave Sam a pitying look. "And if I can't coach you to even have sex, maybe I'll have more luck with Lemmy."

"Jerk."

"So what's this job you were talking about?"

"In Idaho. Sounds like a haunting, but I'll have to do some more research when we get there..."

**...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... ...****oooooOOOOOooooo****... **

They made it to Idaho over two days, with only a couple of Level One Events. Whilst doing research in the library, Sam had cause to check back through the laptop's browser history, looking for a previous link he'd followed. He was surprised to find a number of links to sites, clips and articles on raqs baladi, but he quickly decided that the shapeshifter must've taken long enough to do some quick research to compose the supposed farewell note from Dean.

It was a routine salt-and-burn, in the end. Lemmy distracted the irate ghost when it manifested and tried to throw Dean through a hedge, and as it dashed the lighter from Sam's hand at the last minute, Lars squatted at the edge of the grave to light it up on command.

When the salt-and-burn was done, Sam spent a quiet evening reading with the pups snuggled against him, while Dean went out to find himself some female company. The encounter was notable for two reasons.

Firstly, because it was one of the few occasions that Dean did not try to share with his brother, in excruciating detail, with helpfully demonstrative hand gestures.

And secondly, when they got back to her place, it became apparent that she happened to be a teacher of belly dance.

And although the Living Sex God would never admit that he'd ever participated in beautiful natural acts wearing nothing but a come-hither smile and a coin belt, she declared herself impressed; after a brief lesson, his hip drops were sharp enough to punch holes in walls, his shimmy was even, rapid and well sustained, and she declared that his baladi walk alone would make women swoon. It was, she decided, because his hips had clearly had so much experience.

**THE END**

* * *

_*SQUELCH*_

Aaaaaaaaand another plot bunny stomped. How satisfying. I just love the noises their crunchy little bones make under my boot. Now I suppose the Denizens will be wanting to move on to a visit from the DDD&SSS van. Or possibly a belly dance recital. Sam is quite a big lad, where the hell we're going to find harem pants that will fit him I have no idea. Perhaps instead of a funeral, we can all go and do a belly dance lesson in memory of Randolph, you can do that for Hen's nights, so I don't see why we couldn't...

Oh. Er. Hang on, Randolph is still twitching, I'll just...

_What? _

*blink blink* Goodness me, Randolph, are you _sure_ about that?

_Seriously?_

Oh, well, who am I to stifle a plot bunny, maybe just one more bit then...


	21. Maybe Theoretical Chapterlet Twenty

This bit is ENTIRELY the fault of Randolph the Plot Bunny; I have NO IDEA where it came from, NO CLUE WHATSOEVER where he thinks it might go and I take NO RESPONSIBILITY AT ALL...

* * *

**Maybe-Chapterlet Which May Or May Not Have Taken Place In The Same Version Of The Jimiverse As The Rest Of My Stories And Might Stay Here Or May Just Disappear From The Story Altogether At Some Point According To The Whim Of The Fickriter Twenty**

_Eight weeks later..._

Morgan looked up at her.

"I'm not a coward," protested Kelly, "It's just that..."

Morgan did the head-tilt thing.

"Yeah, yeah, all right," mumbled Kelly, "I'm a coward. Guilty as charged."

She squared her shoulders, and marched into the bathroom.

Then peed on the stick.

Then endured the longest two minutes of her life...

"Ah, shit."

* * *

O_o


End file.
